Otaku Three: Eva Revolution!
by Skysaber
Summary: What do you do in a universe where everything is doomed to go horribly wrong?
1. Chapter 1

Otaku Reflected  
Episode Three, Eva Revolution

Part One,  
A Superspy in Eva

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

Disclaimer: This was just written to screw with the Eva series, nothing more, nothing less.

OoOoO

Jared Saotome waited in the train station, reading a perfectly ordinary paperback this time. No secret clues in this one, which he felt odd, because he was here on an assignment. The Agency had sent him to this train station at this time after a dimension jump to get here.

Oh well, at least it was a good book.

He shut off outside sensation to focus on it., and so it was with some surprise awhile later that he was seized and roughly shaken, then being quickly dragged off to a car.

"I swear! Didn't you hear me calling? You looked like you were in a Zen trance with that novel. This is an emergency!"

"Aaagh! My book!" Jared shook himself free and went and grabbed the fallen novel. When he rounded to go after her he nearly dropped it again.

The dark haired woman grabbed him again. "Jared, get over here! We have to get you to the Geofront. I'm Captain Misato Katsuragi, welcome to Nerv."

But he already knew who she was from looking at her.

Misato threw him in the car and drove off.

OoOoO

When he'd had time to get his mental breath back he tuned in to Misato's one sided conversation. She was telling him all the typical stuff, but she kept referring to him as an Ikari.

"I'm sorry." He interrupted her. "I don't go by that name, and I believe I never will."

Misato directed a startled look at him, then turned her face back to the road. "I'd heard that you and your father didn't get along. I just didn't expect that it would be this bad."

Jared went pale white.

~I'm... Shinji?~

He surreptitiously checked himself over. ~Physically, I'm unchanged, except for age. Which leaves me with the *role* of Shinji. Oh, man.~ He calmed himself with a few deep breaths. ~So begin working on emergency contingency plans. Going along with *this* role means the destruction of all life on Earth - except me and Asuka. But spending the rest of my life with Asuka as the only other living person would drive me nuts and *then* some! Best to change things from the start.~

He glanced aside at Misato.

Misato was frowning. ~Even the *mention* of his father was enough to send him into shock! Well,~ her lips tightened. ~He's just going to have to deal with it. But somehow I get the impression that meeting the commander isn't going to be easy.~

Jared closed his eyes and concentrated. ~Okay, I was at the train station the whole time, which was clearly the meeting point as that's where the Agency sent me. Seeing as how I didn't wander off like Shinji did, and seeing as how there was a distinct lack of huge invaders nearly stepping on me at the pickup, I can assume that Misato was able to find me swifter than in the series, which means we've got a short lead.~

He glanced at the major... err, captain. ~Which means no delays. Except for when she pulls over to observe the invader with those field glasses, and the car gets overturned by the shockwave from the N2 mine.~

He coughed. "Miss Katsuragi?"

She flashed him a brilliant smile intending to charm. "Call me Misato."

"Misato, can we hurry up to wherever it is we're going? I'm kind of anxious to get this over with."

Misato thought about that and abandoned her plans to pull over with the binoculars to check out the opposition. The kid deserved that much. Her foot depressed the pedal even farther. "Sure."

"Thank you. Do you know how long to get there?"

"Maybe a couple of hours, if we're lucky."

That didn't make much sense, that they'd deliver him *that* far away from the base they were taking him to when there were trains close by. But thinking back to the series, the enemy *had* been stepping on or about them when Misato first picked up Shinji, then they later looked back with the field glasses to see it in the far distance across some mountains. Since it was ridiculous to assume the invader had been walking *away* from Nerv when that was its target, some weenie probably decided to deliver him to the far side of Japan for security reasons and they'd been racing the enemy the whole way back.

Good thing Misato drove fast.

~Okay, it's a fair bet at some point I'll have to pilot Evas. Which means I'd better get prepared.~ Surreptitiously checking his watch he found the skill catalog contained three Eva piloting programs: Basic, Intermediate and Advanced. A two hour lead... at this program size that gave him time for two of those packages. ~Better get started.~

"Okay. I'd like to rest my eyes a bit if you don't mind. The trip was kinda rough."

Misato glanced aside at the buff youth having emotional problems. ~Poor Kid.~ She flashed him a brilliant smile. "Sure. That's no problem. Say, could ya tell me why you're all dressed up like that?"

Jared glanced down at himself. A silk and cotton fighting outfit ala a kung fu Dread Pirate Roberts, minus mask. Well, he couldn't tell her about the real reasons. But trouble was he didn't have a good lie on hand either. The boy shrugged. "Uh, well... it's a private thing."

"Ah." Misato said seriously, noting a few things of concern. "So why the sword?"

Again the youth drew his attention to the katana he carried. This time he laughed. "This? You know, I've been carrying it so long I honestly didn't notice."

Misato grew worried, then sighed. ~It's probably nothing.~

He nodded. So far so good. He leaned his seat back, slipping out the synoptic teacher in the guise of a simple headband. Putting it on, he queued up the basic program first, then the advanced.

He had a feeling he might need it.

The shockwave from the N2 mine passed by them while they were passing through a tunnel on their way to the Geofront. They made good time.

OoOoO

Jared was more than happy to let Misato wander around inside the Geofront. It let his hindbrain learn a portion of the layout while he considered what to do about Gendo. The starting of everything was before he first got in the Eva. Once he'd done that, he was in the bad guy's power and all potential for arguing was over.

Right now he had to decide what he wanted, and how hard to hold out for the most important bits. Because it was now, before they had the dummy plug, when Rei was too injured, and their only hope lay with him that his only potential for haggling existed.

The view out over the geofront, while fairly impressive, was also so tinged with the ominous that he couldn't appreciate it, especially given his current thoughts.

Jared steered Misato down another corridor they hadn't been down before, learning yet more of the place while his mind churned. He'd actually been kind of surprised to find he'd carried a Nerv ID card. It had the name of Ikari on it, however, which both confirmed his suspicions and spooked him.

~Okay, I'm slightly younger than in the Ranma world, which is exactly in keeping with this place. I can pass for a slightly advanced fourteen this way, which is undoubtedly what my records say.~ He grimaced. ~I am also Gendo Ikari's son, which is a step down even from Genma, by quite a bit in fact. Trade a fat, balding martial artist who is amazingly greedy for a genocidal madman who destroys the human race. No, not a step up.~

He kept her from turning the same way that she'd been before, steering her down a new path so he could learn what was down there. The center of the plot, he decided, was Ayanami. Without Rei there would be no Human Instrumentality Project, thus no genocide.

Misato noted Jared's frown and worried. "Look, I'm sure it's around here somewhere. I just haven't been in this section very often."

He smiled at her. "That's all right. I don't mind. Why don't we try this way?" He waved her toward a door that he was pretty sure did not go in the right direction. As he did so he spoke into his watch softly. "I need a scenario prediction."

When he flipped open his paperback, he was already reading what would happen.

OoOoO

Scenario One, Direct Confrontation:

OoOoO

There came the standard scene of leading them into a darkened chamber, to switch the lights on when he was right before Unit One.

"Oh, a giant robot." Jared noted wryly, unsure of what his reaction was supposed to be. It had been a while since he'd seen the series and wasn't particularly interested in doing a Shinji impersonation in any case.

"Evangelion Unit One." Ritsuko told him proudly, as Misato followed them out on the catwalk. "There are mankind's only hope against the angels."

He sighed. "I know what they are. Do you think I don't remember? My mother made the first progress that let you develop them, or at least started the project before one *ate* her. She went inside and never came out again! It turned her into liquid goo! Her last words were about wanting me to see the achievements of what she'd done, and now she's only a puddle of muck!"

Misato and Ritsuko were shocked, yet got into a side conversation about how Rei was unavailable and Unit Zero in cryostasis, so they were going to activate this one. Then a typical comment which led to the very short revelation about how and why Jared was their pilot.

Jared crossed his arms and stared at the Eva while Misato gaped. "This thing is more my mother's grave than that empty marker in the cemetery. Her soul may still floating around in there. And you want *me* to get in next?"

"Correct."

Two guesses about who that was and the first one didn't count. A man was up in his little alcove near the ceiling. Jared noted the defenses without being obvious about it nor giving the man any of his attention. There was an inch thick layer of armor glass polished so smooth that it was nearly invisible. It was easily bulletproof and would certainly change the arc of a laser. Too risky to kill him now.

Gendo Ikari, as usual.

The man smirked nastily. "It's been a while."

Jared Saotome's face went flat. "Not nearly long enough." and turned his back.

Ikari snorted, smirking.

Jared didn't look at the man he was addressing. "Gendo, I didn't come here to play any of your sick, sadistic games." He produced a scroll out from the Standard Light Urban Survival Pack and held it while he pivoted to face the enemy.

"I came to deliver this."

Gendo was immovable. "And what is that?" He managed to ask it with contempt.

Jared shoved the scroll off on Ritsuko without looking at her. "I give it to your servant within your sight and thus symbolically to you. You are cast out of the clan, denied use of the name Ikari, bearing fully the blame for my mother's death, and also it serves as a post-mortem certificate of annulment, dissolving your marriage with my mother as if it had never happened."

Ritsuko stared at the scroll in her hands with startled amazement.

Gendo gripped the railing with a snarl. "You aren't able to do that. The marriage had issue."

Jared smugly gave his head a single, negatory shake. "No. My mother has already been granted official forgiveness for infidelity, in light of your own; Sleeping with Ritsuko, her mother and others that we're aware of."

"Yui was *not* unfaithful!" Gendo gripped the railing, growing even angrier.

Misato looked at Ritsuko. "Rits?"

Ritsuko frowned and nodded, causing Misato to clutch the railing in a near-faint.

Jared played with his glasses. "So you don't dispute your own? Good, in light of the proof we have. But, no, it has been chosen to interpret your own abandonment of me as sufficient proof of your *not* being my father. After all, what real man would divest himself of his wife's only child the moment she was away if he *was* the father?"

The redhead smugly motioned to the scroll. "That logic held up in court, Gendo. I suggest that you start using another family's name. Ayanami would suit you nice. After all, what better proof of your loyalty than the name of the child you actually *raised?*"

Gendo snarled, then stood up straight and got colder than usual. "That's beside the point. I summoned you here to serve a purpose."

The redhead turned his back and folded his arms conclusively. "The next time you commit murder, Gendo, why don't you be more subtle about it? I'm already resigned that my arrival here put me where you could easily kill me, but..."

Ritsuko grabbed his arms and interrupted. "Jared, he's your father. He's not going to kill you. We need you to pilot..."

He thrust her hands off, hating the act but knowing it was necessary. "He is NOT my father! At best he rises to the level of sperm donor, if that! Being a father involves love and kindness and other things that madman is *incapable* of!"

"Jared Ikari." Gendo's voice sounded loud resonating throughout the chamber. "Get in the Eva and pilot it."

Jared lowered his head and glared sidelong. "I can no longer bear the Ikari name as long as you live to sully it. My adoptive clan is Saotome. Get used to it."

Gendo frowned.

The youth yawned.

"Well?" Misato broke in, after it was clear he wasn't going to break the silence.

"No, thank you." Jared informed her, politely though.

"If you're not going to pilot it, get out." Gendo inserted his remarks from his vantage point. "Piloting an Evangelion is your purpose, it's what we brought you here for. If you're not going to do it, then leave."

The redhead sighed in relief. "Thank you, I shall." and started toward the exit.

The door failed to open when he touched the pad. Jared rolled his eyes. "Oh dear, oh dear." Turning his back to the door he waved theatrically. "So it begins! We tell him he's worthless, that we don't need him. But letting him go? Fat chance. We have another chance to abuse him. Because having told him to leave and making him unable to comply we can state that he's disobeying, which means that brutish thugs in suits can beat him senseless, teaching him that he has to do whatever we say or die."

Jared glared at Gendo. "Mr Ayanami, you are as shallow and thuggish as you've ever been."

There was a long moment of directed wills in contest.

"Get in the Eva, Jared." Gendo finally broke it.

Jared thumbed the direction of the Evangelion. "That thing?" He took a step forward, fueling his lines with a knowledge of the series. "You'd have me crawl in my mother's coffin? I admire your sense of theater, even if I don't care for the macabre. But your sense of humor is as withered as your soul."

Ritsuko wasn't amused. "This was no joke." She folded her arms. "Unless you get in the Eva and pilot it then mankind will die."

Jared ignored her, snapping a sidelong comment at Gendo. "By the way, as the murderer of Yui, there's the traditional reward put out on your head; ten thousand bushels of rice or the weight of your severed head in gold, payable to whoever brings it in."

Misato and Ritsuko were both sweatdropping at the jaw-dropping seriousness of the hostility going on between the father and son.

"You won't be needing them. They'll never collect." Came the voice from the ceiling. Jared directed his attention away.

"Perhaps not, but the thought counts." An eyebrow was raised alongside a smug smile. "Besides, the UN and all its member nations have been made aware of this casting out, as well as the charges. Having a large organization to defend you only works so long as you *have* that organization. If mankind *really* needs this place to save them, then having a murderer at the head is as bad a choice as could be made. Maybe they'll have doubts about leaving you in place here." Jared was confident of all he said, as he knew with his superspy tools he could back it all up.

Gendo was gritting his teeth, not really believing that SEELE would let that happen. How could they have allowed challenge to his position this early?

The building shook. Apparently all of their lead time had been used up. The invader had arrived. Jared hid a sigh. Okay, he was now in a position to utterly refuse all help of any kind, which placed him in a position where he could force a request to be listened to.

Well, one thing remained.

Gendo was staring at the ceiling. "It's close. It must sense us."

Ritsuko glared at the youth. "Jared, get inside."

Jared just stood there. This wasn't over until Gendo played his final card.

Gendo deepened his scowl, then shifted his attention to the monitors, calling for his subordinate what's-his-name, telling him. "Wake up Rei."

The overheard reply. "Can we use her?"

Gendo's heartless rebuke. "She's not dead yet."

"Understood."

"Rei?" Gendo asked the monitor, receiving a weak reply from the girl. "Our spare is unusable. You will do it again." Without even hearing Jared knew the response she gave to that to be 'yes, sir'.

Ritsuko and Misato left him to his devices as the ground crew began to reset the chamber for the clone. He resisted the temptation to drum his fingers against something.

Bored beyond imagining, the redhead pulled out a yo-yo and began to play. There came the standard sequence of Rei in plugsuit and bandages being wheeled in, sitting up with gasps and moans inspired by the pain from the movement.

It touched Jared's heart, as much as he didn't want it to. Wheeling in his yo-yo, he crossed over to the medical gurney and placed a hand on Rei's chest, forcing her down. "No," he shook his head. "You must rest."

Gendo had returned to being smug. "If you aren't willing, then Rei will have to pilot the Evangelion." Then he snapped his fingers and two security guards rushed Jared to wrench him away from the bedside.

The yo-yo zipped out almost too fast to see, tagging one guard in the face and wrapping the string around the legs of the other accompanied by a swift yank. Both rifle-toting armored guards fell in the blood red drink where they promptly began to drown.

The yo-yo snapped back to Jared's hand. He'd not even bothered to remove the other from Rei's chest. He straightened taller, fixing his glasses. "Gendo, whatever guards you use against me *will* die. I just want you to be aware of that. So that you don't waste their lives uselessly, like now."

Gendo just stared at him. Ritsuko and Misato were almost too upset to make their expected protests.

"And when she dies." Jared concluded for him, but got interrupted by the building shaking. Earthquakes he was used to, he was from California, after all and had lived through some of the big ones first hand. He'd rather enjoyed them, actually, truth be told. But Rei's gurney had rolled away before he could snatch her off of it, spilling her badly.

The Nerv staff weren't so fortunate. Many panicked and lost their feet. A few girders fell from the ceiling and Jared looked up just as they were about to be hit. He let out a small sigh of relief when Unit One's interposing hand knocked them away.

~Okay, I *am* Shinji's stand-in. That means I'm flat out invulnerable so long as Unit One has anything to say about it. She won't let anything happen to me.~ He checked just to make sure. Yup, Rei's gurney had rolled away at the start of that. He was alone under the Eva unit's protective hand.

Stage was set.

Jared adjusted his glasses, still unruffled. "Well Gendo, looks like you have another child abuse case on your hands. Either that or negligence, not having planned better than to be caught between an unwilling draftee and an intensive care patient." He looked up, letting the light frost his glasses.

"But I don't hate you *quite* enough to ignore this situation. Tell you what, since your idea of proper behavior includes leaving a poor child you were responsible for abandoned on the street without so much as an allowance, one can only *guess* what your generosity is. Therefore, I'll choose my own wages."

He motioned with his head toward the injured girl in the plugsuit. "I'll take Rei off your hands." ~There. Give the man a choice between the total, imminent loss of everything from the angel, or the loss of a few vital things to me. Things which, in the second case, he might hope to regain via his stock in trade of treachery.~

The commander of Nerv's hands clapped down forcibly on the railing. "That is unacceptable."

"Oh? More of a rescue. But now the price has gone up. I'll take Rei *and* Misato."

The commander of Nerv's face grew more stern. "That leads to totally uncalled for breaches of Nerv's security organization. I will not allow that."

"Rei, *and* Misato, *and* Ritsuko, *and* living arrangements of my choosing." The redhead smirked over crossed arms. "And you had better realize the difference between a broken security arrangement or no organization at all. It sounds like the moment to decide for certain is drawing near. I came here prepared for my own death. How about you?"

The building shook.

Jared's smiling, confident face met the commander's strained one. Gendo had to know that Rei in Eva One was a false hope at best, more a bargaining tool than an actual option, dooming them to mass suicide if he tried it.

From the sweat on his face it looked like he did. His projects weren't that far along.

Jared buffed his nails against his shirt. "And now a salary equal to yours on top of all the rest. But I'll give you a bargain; commit suicide right here, right now, with me to witness, and I'll let all the other conditions slide and do it for free. What do you say?"

The redhead's confident glare met commander Ikari's (he knew the old guy wasn't going to change his name anyway). That was it, the cards were on the table, and Ikari left to choose between aspects he didn't like or ones he hated worse, and *enough* of them that Jared's real purpose was obscured.

Sometimes it really paid to be a superspy.

The building shook again.

Jared shrugged. "Not because I have to, just to be nice, I'll allow them each forty hours a week to continue their existing duties at Nerv. With twenty hours of flex time to be used as needed throughout the month. But really, you stole my family name and destroyed my mother, restitution is the *least* you could offer." He once again directed a look upward. "I'll take that in payment of a new family, or your suicide. Go ahead and choose for yourself."

The evil man was sweating, not liking scenarios where his control faltered and neither his power nor threats could regain it. Especially when *anyone* clashed wills with him! Or even worse when it hurt his plans.

"Get in the Eva." Gendo replied, after a long wait.

"I will hear the orders from your own mouth before I do it." Jared replied.

"You'll have your payment." Gendo half turned away.

Jared started walking toward the exit door.

"What are you DOING!" Ritsuko screamed, drawing Gendo's attention back in the chamber.

Jared stopped, facing the door, speaking to the room in general. "Do you have any *idea* how easy it would be for him to renege on our arrangement if I just went and did what he said? He'd leave me with nothing, without even a second thought on the matter. There's NO WAY I'm going out there without already being paid in full. He has no honor, nor the illusion of any."

There was silence behind him.

He checked, and Jared saw that Gendo had vanished. He shrugged. "Oh well. Time for me to leave, I guess." He began fiddling with the door controls.

Misato charged him, grabbing an arm. "Look, why don't you just swallow your pride and *pilot* it! The whole planet could just..."

She broke off as the opposite door swished open, revealing more guards with lowered rifles. Gendo had reappeared in his alcove above.

"You expect to use force?" Jared hated clashing arrogance with this man, and it was growing old. Especially since *his* arrogance was artificial, summoned for a goal, while his enemy was using the real thing.

Gendo almost laughed. "No, I just wanted to deliver your first month's salary." One of the men below opened a briefcase and revealed cash, which didn't interest Jared any as he didn't even recognize the type of bills.

"That fails to fill the most important component." He informed the older man flatly.

"Misato, Ritsuko, you will follow this man's orders." Gendo ordered. Jared merely stared at the man until he continued. "Rei, you must do as he says."

"Revokable only by my specifically saying so to them in person." The redhead demanded as the additional condition against betrayal.

After a pause Gendo added a slight nod and, "Yes. Though they must not reveal to you any of their duties at Nerv."

Jared smiled. "That won't be a problem." As the building shook once more he went over to Rei's side, kneeling beside her. "Rei, do you accept what's been done?"

She looked to Gendo, and Jared did too, in case the man should shake his head or otherwise send a negation signal to her that it was a false order. Gendo nodded, grudgingly, unwilling to believe he'd been thwarted so far, yet already plotting to sidestep everything done here, killing the boy if necessary. But for now Jared was useful at a critical juncture. It was crucial that he and Nerv survive, his projects weren't far enough along to do without the extra time.

But Jared's life would be short, Gendo promised himself that. His son was turning out to be far more trouble than he was worth.

Jared was touching his lip. "Well, let's see. I've got the cash, I've got one girl." He looked over at Ritsuko and Misato. "Do either of you feel that falling under my power is too high a price to pay for the salvation of Earth?"

"Will you just get in there?" Misato shouted, pointing toward the Eva, unwilling to believe that all this had gone on. This was absurd!

He lowered a firm gaze on her. "Are you willing to accept this arrangement and abide by it? After all, I still have to save everyone and come back alive."

Two nods from that quarter, and a "We accept. Now get in there!"

He checked around. Well, that was the maximum that he could expect. Now up to fulfilling his part of the bargain. He closed his eyes and thought *very* hard. Eva Unit One lifted its hand and he jumped up into its palm.

"Everybody clear the chamber. I'm late for a fight." And with that he leapt into the waiting entry plug. Power was plugged in, and they began the entry process even as the others scrambled from the holding chamber. If he could, he would have rushed the launch procedure with the emergency start routines, rather than wait for the commands to be sent from the HQ, but that material was probably in the Intermediate Eva piloting program that he'd not yet taken.

Soon enough he'd find he was moved to the launching pad.

"How's our lord and master doing?" Misato asked sarcastically, now they were in the command center and things were proceeding normally. She was still offended about that. How *dare* he?

"He's not turned into a puddle of goo if that's what you mean." Ritsuko replied with a grin, amused by her friend's offense. *She* had no intention of living up to the bargain, but it got the pilot into the entry plug. All that remained now was defeating the angel.

She frowned. "That's odd."

"What is it?" Misato worried.

Ritsuko blinked. "He showed no reaction when we filled the tube with LCL, just took a deep breath of the liquid acting as if everything were normal."

"That's strange." Her friend added.

"Connecting main power."

"Secondary nerve connections established."

Ritsuko was studying her controls. "Amazing. There was only a one in one hundred thousand chance the Eva would run at all, but everything appears to be functioning within normal parameters."

Maya, whose shoulder Ritsuko was looking over her controls at, was also studying the viewscreen. "Synchronization rate established at 72%. Harmonics seem to be normal, I see no disturbances."

Ritsuko was shaking her head. "This is well beyond expectations."

"And how's he doing?" Misato asked, now a little concerned as life in the command deck got her back to feeling more normal.

"Splendidly. I say we should do it."

Gendo was smiling. Now the boy was inside Eva, he was within Gendo's power.

"Begin launch sequence!" Misato ordered.

"Spreading AT field." Jared reported, as the angel started trying to hit him with it's long arms and he began dodging, then dropping low and doing a leg sweep, knocking the enemy down, then grappling with it. "Neutralizing enemy AT field."

"Alright buddy!" Misato was shouting into her microphone. "Just where did you learn how to pilot an Eva? You're no rookie at this, *that's* for sure!"

That story ended bloodily a few pages later. Gendo had claimed he was the fourth angel and sent Rei after him in Unit Zero when Jared was far away from his own mecha. As fighting aliens was an existing Nerv duty, she went ahead and did it without complaint. It was followed shortly after by the destruction of mankind as Rei was totally insufficient to stop the next real attacker.

OoOoO

End Scenario One

OoOoO

Scenario Two, Stealth, didn't go much better. Attempting to be sly only got him in bad situations against Nerv's intelligence apparatus and Gendo's plotting. Jared skipped ahead a few pages, glancing up to see Misato going in what was probably the direction of a phone where she would call Ritsuko and get her to lead them to the Eva. Time was short.

He barely skimmed through Scenario Three, which involved him staying close to the plot, only to find himself unable to alter it at critical moments. Scenario Four, Mole was about him staying fairly typically Shinji except for establishing a running data feed to the outside powers, attempting to undercut Gendo and Nerv.

Neither worked.

Glancing up proved Misato was on the phone already. Jared just checked chapter headings and endings of his various options, arrayed in the order he would have normally taken them but NOT in any order of success. Scenario Five found him pushing the wrong person at the wrong time and causing Third Impact. Six left him critically injured from having overextended trying to do critical alterations unsupported, then leading to another repeat of Gendo's disastrous failure with the Human Instrumentality Project...

Man, wasn't there *any* way to pull a happy ending out of this? Unfortunately, too much information was as bad as too little when the time was short. As Ritsuko arrived there were literally minutes left to decide.

Scenario Seven, Just Plain Nuts, had the most positive results that he could tell, but too many variables to decide for sure if that was good or bad. Even Weirder had positive outcomes 75% of the time. Unfortunately, he no longer had time to read the details on either as Misato plucked the book out of his hands, showing him Eva One.

"Here we are." She smiled encouragingly.

Jared swallowed heavily, then brightened. Insanity was something he was good at. It was better add-libbed anyway.

Ritsuko began to open her mouth to say something, but the redhead interrupted her by jumping in to a sentai pose. "I see! You are members of a secret organization! And my being brought here was solely because *I* am the only being on Earth capable of piloting this giant war machine in the fight to save the human race!"

Ritsuko snapped her mouth shut, turning her head away and muttering. "That's not... actually, that's surprisingly accurate."

Suddenly she saw that he'd climbed to the spire of the Eva's mighty head, though where he got the cloak to wear, along with enough of a breeze to billow it, was a mystery that was going to haunt both women.

Jared got in 'Righteous Declaration' pose. "It is the duty of the martial artist to defend the weak. We, the members of the Robot Defense Force, have sworn to defend the Earth against those who would destroy it. No matter the cost, we will triumph over evil and make the world safe for ordinary teenagers!" He spun around and posed again with a V for victory over his eyes. "So in spite of the tragedy of my past, doubtless to be revealed next season, I will fight for Love and Justice, and triumph over evil!"

"Ugh?" Misato sweatdropped.

Jared dropped the stance to a pose where he touched his lip in consternation. "Now all I'll need is a weird pet, preferably one that talks. I mean, I already *got* my huge robot, the loyal support crew, and the secret base... Oh!" He snapped his fingers. "AND we need a villain. Actually, what we *really* need is an obvious, really nasty enemy that we can take tons of fights scenes on. Then we need a *secret* bad guy, maybe even the head of our own organization! Yeah! Someone's who's been working with the other side all along, and performs terrible experiments in the basement labs he keeps from the knowledge of all, so he can unleash his plans to devastate the world for his own personal gain!"

"That's..." the word 'absurd' died on Ritsuko's lips as she realized that might well describe what she was helping Gendo at doing.

Gendo decided *not* to make his dramatic entrance at that time.

Jared jumped down to the deck in a single bound, landing lightly on one foot. "Okay secret warriors! Time to lock and load! We'll prove our mettle on the field of battle! Let's get this war machine launched!"

Some of the maintenance crew than had been lounging around began to snicker.

"Uh... Jared?" Misato asked.

He ignored her, racing up the ramps to the waiting entry plug, which he slammed closed with him inside. Triggering the basic launching sequence was easy, and the Eva's plates began to open to receive the plug. The chamber was emptying as everyone ran about. Then his entry plug made connection with the Eva.

~I think that's my cue.~ Jared thought as the power connection hit. He arced his back and cried. "Evangelion Power! Charging Up!" Followed by the detailed mental image of him floating in space, spinning as bits of Eva armor wrapped him protectively.

A lot of raw talent, fixed in with the synoptic learning courses he'd snuck in on the way in and Jared had a proud state of accomplishment Shinji would never enjoy, as *he'd* had to pick up it all on the job with inadequate training and a misunderstood piece of machinery.

Jared was coming at this with all the knowledge of the series, his own brain courses to feed him data Shinji and Nerv never had, and now enjoyed the status of feeling his Eva like it was an extension of his own skin.

Outside there was a complete lack of a dramatic special effect, but it was the thought that counts anyway. His special superspy tools served him well by disengaging the locks and restraints that held his Evangelion Unit, even while people now began scrambling for cover.

He began gleefully shouting into the entry plugs pickups. "Meet now the true power in the universe, Negatrash! That of an ordinary Earth teenager! Who *also* happens to have a secret identity as a Giant Robot Pilot!"

OoOoO

Misato ran into the control room, panting at all the steps. "What's going on?" She demanded of the three techs who were working the boards.

"Evangelion Unit One has begun launch sequence!" Maya gave her startled reply.

Ritsuko reached the boards and keyed a communications channel. "Jared, be careful. Let us help you. Piloting an Eva is not as simple as it looks. This is not a video game!"

"Ya got *that* right!" He replied, cheery as ever. "In a video game I would have a neater costume, not to mention that a cute chick would be one of the other pilots. At *least* one. But that's all for later in the season! Now is the time for my triumphant battle against the forces of darkness and evil! And where's my romantic interest? How can I get in trouble so you can do a closeup of her worried expression if I don't have a romantic interest? How can I triumph against impossible odds, rising from near certain doom without encouragement from my female lead? Don't you guys read the script?"

"He's insane." Ritsuko said, stunned.

"Is he really? Just look at these synch rates." Misato pointed out on the board.

"72%! How on Earth did he get a synch ratio that high!"

"I don't know, but he seems serious about this. Can we abort the launch sequence?"

"Don't." Came Gendo's firm reply. "Send him to the surface. Let's see how well he does there. Don't let his enthusiasm go to waste."

"Roger." Misato nodded her head. "Launch Eva!"

His Eva was launched to the surface.

"Jared, just try walking for now." Ritsuko asked.

"Walking?" He gloated, really enjoying this. "No way! I've seen enough giant robot shows to know this thing can fly!"

"That's..." Dr. Akagi's protest died on her lips and the Evangelion began to rise up and fly toward the outskirts of the city. She rounded on the commander shouting. "We didn't build that capability *in* there! This is simply impossible!"

Gendo just smiled.

"He's modulating the AT field to counteract gravity." Maya said from where she was still checking the boards.

"Can you do that?" Misato asked.

"Look at him." Maya replied, glancing up to check the screen herself, where the Eva was quite obviously flying without external wings or support. "He appears to be doing it instinctively."

He landed and posed in classic hero style on a mountaintop outside of town.

"Jared, I want you to listen to me." The blonde Dr. Akagi leaned forward. "There's some special things you need to know about your Eva."

"I know, I know." He interrupted. "All super combat devices have a tragic flaw, one that all our science cannot overcome. From the power cord I would estimate that on this one it is a lack of an internal power source, leaving me with barely a few minutes of emergency power with which to defeat my enemy or perform a dramatic escape during moments of crisis! Now *you* guys start working and tell me what our enemy's single, great weak point is as soon as you know, okay?"

"For a twit he certainly is picking this up fast." Ritsuko remarked to herself, then. "We already know that, Jared. The angel will have a red core. Destroy that, and you..."

"Hang on *just* a minute!" His voice snapped back. "Our enemy is angels? No! That can't be! Angels are perfect and loyal and true! And if they wanted to destroy mankind that could only be because we had done something singularly awful and *needed* to be destroyed!"

"That's just a code phrase." The doctor remarked dryly.

"Then think of another!" Came his emphatic words. "How can we expect to do battle with our hearts pure and true if we disturb our symbolism? We'd be messing ourselves up from the start! Filling ourselves up with fear and hate and personal glory! No, we're all supposed to be GOOD guys! The imagery's just gotta be there! I insist that all those code words now get changed. From now on, *I* am the mighty Sky Lord, pilot of the inestimable combat mecha Thunder Knight! Only since its elemental attacks aren't active yet we'll have to go about calling it a simple Muscle Knight as if we didn't know of its fated destiny as an Elemental Knight before its magnificent powers manifest under great emotion in the heat of battle! Our enemy can be a Dark Warrior."

There was a moment of waiting.

"Dark Warrior approaching Thunder Knight's position." Maya remarked dryly.

"Negative." Gendo told them over folded hands. "We're not changing the codes we use to refer to the Evas or the enemy. Jared is the Third Child, he is piloting Evangelion Unit One, and the Angel is approaching."

The Evangelion flopped onto its back and plucked a tree out by the roots, sticking it between its gums for all the world like a farmer chewing on a straw. The Eva stuck its arms behind its head and contemplated the evening sky. "Hope you enjoy fighting this stuff alone, then." Jared's voice came back.

Maya went pale. Misato was yelling over her shoulder. "Listen Jared, you've got to obey orders. You're a boy you know. Gendo says we're keeping the old codes."

"Then get Gendo out here to fight them. You're throwing me into the classic Moral Dilemma *too early!* I *CAN'T* fight anything with angel as its name, that's like labeling me a bad guy from the start, and even successful bad guys lose in the end! Call it a Hellspawn or a Fallen One, or... ANYTHING!"

"They shall remain angels." Gendo said calmly over folded hands.

The Eva rolled onto its side, as Jared's voice continued to come over the speakers. "But whatever an angel does is, by definition, right because angels themselves are perfect and we flawed men can only guess at their reasoning. So if that *is* an angel out there then I'm obligated by what is right and true to help the darn thing and our series is over before it's even begun, don't you see? The very best I can do to help you is stay indecisive because otherwise I'd have to be out there helping it to stomp the city!"

"This boy is insane." Ritsuko said with wide eyes.

"No," The boy's voice snapped. "Just very loyal. I will abide by the side of Right, whatever that side may be, even if it means my own death. I will *not* be an agent of evil! So either get your own problems straightened out and be my fellow good guys, or..." The Eva shrugged. "I guess the best I can do would be to park this thing and wander off into the sunset. If mankind were to die at the hands of angels that's only because we were evil and deserved it. You can find plenty of examples in the scriptures if you want."

In the command center, all eyes turned to Gendo.

"Ikari?" His henchman made the word a question to the Nerv commander.

"They can't *just* be code names if you aren't willing to change them." The boy's voice insisted. "Because code names change all the time, even every week according to the spy novels. So if they *aren't* code names, then they've got real meaning, right?"

Silence from Gendo.

"And if they've got real meaning then you're either bad guys or seriously misguided. Nothing I can do to help you on either count." The Eva pilot waited, yet heard nothing, and so the mighty robot started trudging back to the launching silo it'd come from. "Well, sorry I can't help you guys."

"Sky Lord," Gendo's voice cut through the static without budging from its pose. "You are to keep your Muscle Knight at its present location."

The Eva paused, as if waiting for something.

"The Dark Warrior is still approaching this city." Gendo concluded, sneering.

"Yatta!" The boy leaped and thrust a fist into the air, actually having his Eva do it too. "You see how easy it is to be good guys?" He cheered. The Eva slapped a fist into is palm. "Now let's show this evil spawn what it really means to tangle with virtuous heroes!"

A mass sigh of relief sounded in the command chamber.

Ritsuko leaned over the controls. "Jared, I want you to go to the building on your left. In it you'll find a rifle. I want you to pick that up, and use it against the angel when it comes within range."

"You're slipping." His voice chided, but he went and picked up the gun, having his Eva hold it while he examined it. "Will the *dark warrior* also have guns?"

"It's been using energy beams." Misato informed him.

Eva One dropped the rifle to around waist level, for all the world using mannerisms like he was actually the one holding it. "Well, that's good enough I suppose. But using guns against energy beams is a losing proposition. What other weapons do I have?"

"What do you mean 'good enough'?" Ritsuko questioned.

Misato overrode her. "The Eva, err, excuse me, your Muscle Knight comes with a progressive knife stored over your left shoulder. You will use that to destroy the *dark warrior's* core."

The Eva was shaking its head. "Guns, knives... you guys watch way too much Street Fighter and Urban Gladiator. First off, using guns when the other guy hasn't got any is a bad sign, and using them against energy beams is dumb. Second, a knife is about as lowbrow a weapon as you can get for close fighting."

"Your point being?" Ritsuko snapped.

The pilot sighed. "They're *both* weapons you want to avoid if you've got anything else that's classier. Class is life in these shows. You were really well set up to be bad guys. Though now you're better off that I'm here to show you what being the *good guys* is all about! So for the next fight, come up with a shield I can carry that diverts and breaks up energy beams and something classy for hand to hand. Swords are traditional and nicely effective, but axes, spears or bladed staffs all have their uses and can be really cool if you know how to pose right!"

"We haven't the budget for that." Ritsuko replied in dry tones. "Our Evas are costly."

"You're slipping." He chided again.

The Eva ran back up to the top of its mountain.

"Jared?" Misato asked. "What are you doing? The An... the *dark* angel's within range of your guns."

"Shhh! It hasn't noticed me yet. I'm waiting for a dramatic entrance!"

There came a mass sweatdropping on the command center. Then they were hit by his sharp intake of breath when he said. "Misato, quick!"

"What is it?" She cried. It was hard to admit, but his behavior was getting their blood up. Hearing the urgency in his voice inspired equal urgency in hers.

"I need to know; am I a dashing sort of hero, the embittered loner, or the goofy and uncoordinated rookie?"

Mass facefault of the command center crew.

As she got up, Misato, brushed back her hair, fighting the urge to scream. "How about the professional soldier, hmm?"

"No, are you crazy? I'd have the lifespan of ice cream in an overheated nuclear blast oven! Professional soldiers are the *first* types to get killed. That's why they can't ever be more than the caring mentor who gets killed partway into the first season! Frankly, I'd choose dashing hero in an instant, but there's a shortage of lazy but lovable, donut-snorting couch potatoes with hearts of gold to serve as the necessary comic relief to such a serious character."

Maya sucked in her top lip. "How about the cocky but talented, pursued by a dozen fiancees, young hero with a mysterious past? I think I read that in a book somewhere."

"I could use that..." His voice came back, thoughtfully considering.

"Will you just fight the angel?" Ritsuko snapped.

"What was that? I didn't copy." His voice came mocking back.

"You heard me, you little..." Ritsuko shouted.

"Doctor." Gendo's voice sounded like a cutting knife. "Adjust your terminology. The pilot will not respond effectively to the old 'codes'. Getting his obedience is worth a minor alteration in language. It fails to change anything meaningful."

Moving humbly, she nodded.

Ritsuko was just leaning forward to shout something when the dark warrior reached what Jared considered to be a satisfactory point. His Eva leapt down before it, pointing a finger while he shouted. "Hold it, Negatrash! I am a Muscle Knight, defender of Earth! And we don't welcome slimy freakazoids here to squash our planet!"

Misato's head fell into her hands.

His Eva began to go through various sentai poses. "So why don't you vamoose bug-breath, or I'll be forced to make stir fry out of you!"

"Jared," Ritsuko warned. "Why don't you try attacking it?"

He was shocked. "Before I finish my entry speech? Get real. I'd incur the sort of bad luck you only see in comic relief sidekicks! Though I *may* have to come up with better lines, these don't sound suitably studly enough."

Mass sweatdropping.

The enemy swung at him.

Dodging with a triple back flip, he then ran three steps forward and sprang into a handspring, flipping three times in the air to land a punch to the dark angel, driving it to its knees while he fell to pose behind the bad guy in a martial arts stance.

Eyes went wide in the command center.

"He's... actually *capable*?" Ritsuko whispered in disbelief.

Falling to catch his Eva on one hand and sweep the recovering alien's legs from it, he launched a flurry of spinning overhand blows and rising kicks smacking the enemy about like a cloth practice dummy.

With a pulse of will, he cut off his Evangelion from command control so they couldn't try any funny business. Then with another pulse of thought, activated broadcast capabilities so that every radio and every shelter for miles around ought to hear him while he torqued Gendo's grimy shorts.

Eva One threw another punch at the target and flipped away for some posing room.

"Fighting evil by moonlight  
winning love by daylight.  
Never running from a real fight  
I am the one named Thunder Knight!"

"What is that? Why is he talking so strangely?" Misato yelled.

"Unidentified. It may have something to do with the music." Maya replied.

"Talking to music? He might be talking to music? That's bizarre!" Several voices of personnel on the bridge responded.

The alien punched at him but he leapt, tucked and spun over it, untwisting in midair in order to kick the monster in the chest. Then dropped and dragon tail swept the invader off its feet once again to follow up with a rising uppercut.

"We will never turn our back on a friend.  
We are always there to defend  
We are the ones on whom you can depend  
We are the team of Royal Knights!"

The enemy blasted out with twin energy beams and sliced off Unit One's arms. 


	2. Chapter 2

Otaku Reflected  
Episode Three, Eva Revolution

Part Two  
A Superspy in Nerv

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

Jared awoke, and the first thing he did was resist an urge to sit bolt upright and shout "Hey! I know that ceiling!"

Staring at the Nerv infirmary ceiling, he closed his eyes. ~So I failed.~

~I hate doing that.~

OoOoO

"I finally found a reference to what he was doing."

"What do you mean?" Ritsuko sipped at her steaming mug as Maya came to her with a report.

"The talking, where his words were acting like musical notes. It's called singing."

"Really? Fascinating. How did he come to know one of the Lost Arts?"

Maya shuffled papers. "We have no clue, yet. I was doing some research and the word cropped up. I did some comparisons and found that what he's doing is similar to what the Catholic church forbade in the latter days of the Roman Empire. They claimed speaking along to music was a sin, inflamed the basest lusts, and contrary to the will of God. Roman legions were used to bring Jews and Muslims into line, and the Muslims later brought holy war into the orient. The pressure eventually stamped it out entirely, and the last death by forced consuming of burning hot coals was recorded in 1262, in Africa."

"I know how it became a Lost Art." Ritsuko retorted in her driest tones, lightened somewhat by her pleased smile at her assistant's progress. "But I also know it is reportedly one of those things where exposure is demanded before you even have a concept what it is you're striving to learn. I know the American attempts to recreate singing fall flat, and don't really compare to what he was doing out there."

"Exposure is right." Maya flipped through some more papers. "We have a sizable portion of the city trying to emulate what they heard last night."

Dr. Akagi shook her head. "Which *still* doesn't tell us where *he* learned to do it."

OoOoO

The video monitor was showing a replay of the fight.

The attacker used energy beams to cut off Unit One's arms. Screaming, Jared had attacked and landed several good kicks, driving back the alien and doing excellent damage but failing to inflict lasting harm. The enemy had then cut the Eva in half at the waist.

There had been screaming going on in the command center all this time, but without command control overrides they were forced to do nothing more than watch as the downed Eva got pounded.

But Jared had fixed his plans surprisingly well in his mind, and that communicated to Eva even when he wasn't conscious. The attacker had been driven back by an electrical blast that'd surprised everybody. Unit One had floated up, flying unsupported and without limbs it shocked the invader with another electrical blast, then proceeded over and touched chests with it, absorbing the alien into itself and acquiring another complete set of arms and legs in the process.

As the triumphant Eva roared over the battlefield, two crystals, each two feet across and pulsing with new energy, had appeared on the chest of the Eva. One of those crystals was pale white and showed a sunbeam pattern engraved thereon, the other was a paler yellow and had an engraved lightning bolt.

Everyone at Nerv was in an uproar.

OoOoO

Ritsuko watched as the last of the Eva's severed limbs was lowered into a holding tank deep at Nerv, where it joined the others in cryostasis.

"Over 60% of the Eva's total mass is in there." She remarked to no one in particular.

Beside her, Misato shrugged. "Well, some battle damage was to be expected, I guess. Still, at this rate we'll have gone through an entire Eva at the end of the next fight. It's lucky that it regenerated itself, or we would've spent almost our entire repair budget. That is unless Gendo's new funding plans go through."

Ritsuko directed a look toward her friend. "It's the pilot I'm worried about."

Misato sighed, looking downward. "Yeah."

OoOoO

Gendo stood in the alcove overlooking the catwalk and work going on around Unit One, now back in its cage.

"Tests have confirmed it." His flunky mentioned.

Gendo nodded. "It's early for Unit One to have acquired S2 organs. This pilot has both exceeded and upset our expectations."

"SEELE will not be pleased." The henchman muttered.

Gendo nodded. "Yes, we must move to placate them. Put Unit One in cryostasis for the time being, once repairs here are finished."

Both men looked out in the chamber, where the new arms and legs of Unit One had grown their own layers of armor, clashing with the purple metal of the original equipment. The new material was white and iridescent, bearing yellow markings, while shaped in a subtly different style. Lacking the distinctive arm rails was an obvious new feature and item of concern. Those rails served in so many ways in launching and transporting an Eva that it would be difficult if not impossible to use standard methods without them, even the primary cage restraints were based on the locking of those rails down. They would have to replace them.

These thoughts ran through both men's heads.

"Are you worried that the restraints might not hold it?" The flunky asked.

"The Eva's armor serves a dual purpose. Protection and binding it to our will. That over half of that restraint is now no longer effective, replaced by armor generated by the Eva itself, is concerning." Gendo stated.

"What of the pilot?"

"His will was obviously the causative factor behind this. The Eva would not have been able to exceed our limits otherwise. Controlling him becomes an item of concern."

The henchman nodded. "Yes, I'll put someone on it."

Light glinted from Gendo's glasses. "One more thing. These crystals are entirely outside of our predictions. Begin a study of them."

The flunky nodded.

OoOoO

Jared wandered around aimlessly in the hospital. He was without his Nerd Toy, One True Watch, the Standard Light Urban Survival Pack... everything but a hospital robe. That made him feel pretty helpless, and hopeless (not to mention naked).

~Doing a Shinji was *not* on my list of priorities. Now I've lost my earliest chance to get the S2 organs absorbed, the fight cost me my chance to use the AT field electric attack I'd been thinking of... We're back to square one.~

It occurred to him that he didn't really know what had happened in that fight, after the trauma caused by being dismembered made him lose control. He sighed. ~I forget exactly what *should* have happened in the series, but this is probably closer to it than what I'd planned.~

~Well,~ he told himself. ~I'm already emotionally blasted. Let's just ride with that, do a Rei impersonation, and see what happens.~

OoOoO

"I am functioning within optimal parameters." Jared told the doctor in flat, emotionless tones, with a stare as dead and uninterested as he could manage.

Ritsuko stared at the kid. "So you're telling me *this* is normal?"

"Correct."

The doctor was reminded of commander Ikari or Rei at that statement. "So how do you explain the way you acted earlier?"

"An excess of enthusiasm. It has been corrected." Jared had taken refuge against the hurts and barbs of a cruel youth in emulating the Star Trek character Spock. It was easier than it should have been to reerect those shields now.

Doctor Akagi nodded. The kid was probably still in some kind of trauma. She left, and when she did Jared unlocked himself from the room, and padded emotionlessly down the corridor into Rei's room.

He sat by her bedside and took her hand. She tried after a moment to pull it away, but he merely tightened his grip, sitting dully by her bedside.

"Why?" She asked him, when it was clear she could not reclaim her hand.

"Because you are my half sister." He replied, lifelessly.

She ceased trying to pull back her hand. They sat like that for hours.

OoOoO

"We're beginning to suspect brain damage." Ritsuko told the commander.

Misato was worried, she gave Ritsuko a glance searching for support. "We've tried putting him in simulation, his synch ratio is down to 4%. He can't even get an Eva moving."

"That is unacceptable." Gendo told them both. "You must restore the pilot of Unit One to operative status."

"I don't think we can do that. It's as if he died." Ritsuko told Gendo.

The Nerv head honcho steepled his fingers more sharply. "We cannot tell when an angel will attack again. To that end it is imperative that we have the means at our disposal to fight them. Get Pilot Saotome functioning at full status as soon as possible."

Misato bit her lip. "Are we sure? Can't we just search for another pilot?"

"That is unacceptable. Pilot Saotome has shown unique ability. He must be restored to active duty." Gendo looked up through his frosted glasses at the two women. "What methods might be pursued to encourage him to be relieved of this trauma?"

Ritsuko studied the ceiling and shrugged. "In normal cases, visits by family and close friends, but Jared has no history. We don't know anyone who knows him. Even the teacher he stayed with before he was called here has died of a heart attack. The boy literally has no one."

"No one except you." Misato told the commander, bluntly.

"We're not close." Was Gendo's reply.

Ritsuko nodded. "Yes, the commander even visited him. The boy had no positive reaction. When pressed, Jared even asked who the commander was. Apparently he has no memory of mister Ikari."

Gendo had already digested that, and didn't like to consider what options it denied him. Abandoning the child had apparently severed bonds that it would be useful to employ now. Misato was just sickened by commander Ikari's lack of reaction to news that his son regarded him as no more than a total stranger.

"Has he shown any positive reaction to anyone?" Misato asked.

Ritsuko considered her. "Two people; Yourself, and Rei Ayanami. In both cases the response is marginal, yet it exists. Everyone else may as well be furniture, which when you consider his state of animated cheerfulness on his arrival here, is an extremely bad sign. Our diagnosis is that he's withdrawn into shock. It may take him years to recover."

"Years we don't have." Gendo concluded. "Doctor Akagi, we need this pilot restored to active status. It was our intention to place him alone in housing in block six. But now..."

Ritsuko shook her head. "I couldn't recommend that. Being alone would probably be the worst thing for him. Even the hospital is too impersonal. I'd recommend a special care facility. Something close to nature."

Gendo nodded, dropping his hands to sit straight and regard both women. "Very well. Misato, you and Rei Ayanami will be relocated. You are to share housing with the Third Child in an attempt to speed his recovery."

Misato frowned. "Yes, sir. It's not that I'm unwilling, but I don't know anything about how to do anything but try and cheer him up. If this is an actual medical case then I'm afraid I'm out of my depth, sir."

Ritsuko nodded. "I could move in with them. That's better than any nursing care we could provide, more of a simulation family." She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "The close bonds may not exist, but could be duplicated. Misato and I already know from college how to share our living space, that could serve as the seed for our trauma patient to believe that a family bond might exist, and come out of hiding."

Gendo tilted his head in what a generous person might call a nod. "Make it so."

Ritsuko couldn't resist a wry smile. "Besides, Misato here is our only resident lazy, but lovable, donut-snorting couch potato."

"Hey!" Misato shouted in protest.

"Besides," Ritsuko ribbed her friend. "She already has a weird pet that Jared might latch on to. Too bad Pen Pen doesn't talk." She grinned through Misato's protests. "I think it may be ideal."

Gendo couldn't resist a thin, self satisfied grin.

OoOoO

Jared followed listlessly as captain Katsuragi led him into the new housing center. It was an old style building in the hills, and Nerv was putting in a new drop shaft, rapid transit tube right nearby to negate the delay penalties of living out so far.

Repair costs to Unit One had been negligible, and the city had received superficial damage only due to his great success. They were using a part of that savings to speed the pilot's recovery.

Captain Katsuragi's car was parked in one section of the three car garage and they carried her groceries in through the front door. Misato paused on the top step, standing aside so that he could see within. "So? Whaddya think, Jared?"

He entered unemotionally, scanning as a mechanical function more than curiosity. By Japan's standards it was a palace and then some, built along more western building tastes and far more spacious.

It was also a hovel, hadn't been well maintained in years, and only recently cleaned up and not very well refurbished. Basically, it needed alot of work, but that actually caught his interest. The place was livable, far more comfortable than Japanese arrangements, and not being in the best of shape meant that stuff could be done with it.

He was in the midst of exploring when he ran into Rei.

In another frame of mind he might have been shocked, as it was she merited a blink. It didn't matter than she was naked and just exiting the shower. That fact had about as much meaning as the color of the towel she'd been using to wipe her hair - which fell so far below notice that he didn't even bother remembering it.

Misato, who'd been following him around, caught this reaction and frowned. It wasn't healthy for young boys to see a young girl in that state and not have any form of reaction to it - not that she was of a mind to encourage anything, they were both way too young, but a cobweb in a window took more of his notice than a naked girl! Something was very wrong with this boy.

Jared paused on his way out of this room, speaking to Rei with near total disinterest in her state. "You're staying here?"

"Yes."

He gave a slight nod. "Your injuries?"

Rei looked at him. "Doctor Akagi will be staying with us."

"Ah." He left the room, a tiny portion of his mind railing at him that there was more to that scene that he should have reacted to, but he consciously ignored it. Halfway down the hall he paused and asked of captain Katsuragi. "Why?"

Misato tried not to be freaked out, reminding herself that this kid had saved them all by defeating the attacker and had nearly died as a result. She put on a happy face. "Why is Ritsuko staying with us? Well, let's just say she's an old friend of mine, helping to defray the rent, okay?"

He pondered and considered this, then blinked, once.

Misato was really beginning to miss the over-eager lad who had been such an emotional and able pilot.

Pen Pen saw the boy and began following him through the rest of the house.

That night, Jared made some notes.

OoOoO

Misato slapped the papers down on the command desk.

"This is as close to a request as the boy is presently able to make." Ritsuko told Gendo over folded arms. "Besides, trying to control his environment is the best sign that we could hope for. If we encourage this, we might speed his recovery."

Gendo stared down at the notes and drawings, then looked up. "What is it?"

Misato relied on her friend, who didn't let her down. "It's a dream house he's made up, based on the present needs of his situation. It's the present dwelling, expanded and made glamorous." The doctor replied.

Misato broke in. "The boy's already responding to having Rei and I around. Going through his papers I found these notes he'd made up regarding the house."

Ritsuko took over without changing her posture. "He's written up a set of alterations, essentially rebuilding the place according to recent psychological needs. First off, he's put down plans for a house three times as large, with independent power and no need for public utilities - with walls of hard stone three feet thick. It's a castle, built as a fortress to shelter his bruised ego."

Misato pled with her eyes. "Commander, you remember how concerned he was with flashy or ornate things when he got here? This house may not mean much to us, but to Jared it's the first example he's shown of returning to his own self."

"I think we should encourage it." Ritsuko added.

Gendo looked down at the cost sheet that Maya had prepared.

"If you want, you could think of it as an investment, preserving our pilots against any future catastrophe. Jared's design adds a survival shelter in the sub-basement, with other adaptations and changes that would lend this toward as being a first rate training center as well. We could add a touch or two on our own that would make it the safest place outside the geofront. The castle-like design lends itself to that."

"More important," Ritsuko added. "Would be giving him a feel of being in control. It's the best thing we could do to speed up recovery."

Gendo continued to stare at the document. The numbers were pitiful compared to the potential value. "Make it so."

The two ladies breathed out hard and left the control room. As they went out, and the door closed behind them, Misato asked of her friend. "So, Ritsuko, when are you going to move in with us?"

The doctor sighed. "Probably when the construction is finished. I've been having so little time lately. We've been keeping the changes to Unit One a secret, but still there are so many people who want to know that it's driving me batty."

Misato nodded. "I can imagine. What are you telling them?"

Ritsuko sighed, and shot a smile to her friend. "Mostly the truth, that we aren't sure, and because we aren't sure the unit's been put in cryostasis. The pilot's mental trauma does nothing to help the scenario."

Misato put a hand on her friend's shoulder. "Come by and join us soon. That might help with both your problems."

OoOoO

Jared investigated the new home. Proof of Nerv's vast construction ability, meant for repairs to the city, the new dwelling had been up in mere days. They had included armor plates in his more humble design, but disguised them as parts of the original walls and bulk structure he had planned. Totally independent of all external utilities, just like he'd done with the old Tendo place.

It was armored to the point where an Evangelion could step on it without serious damage, (though he resolved to avoid doing that if possible) it was nestled among several hills which would divert blasts away, it had an outer wall which was formed in a complete ring and was sloped in such a way so as to to *also* redirect the force of explosions. The entire house and all external surfaces were fireproof as well.

It was as good as could be done, but considering the forces of destruction thrown around in this series that was meaningless should they actually be unlucky enough to fall within anything's arc of fire.

Of course, for comfort value until that happened it excelled.

Outside it had a big Neptune pool with enough streamlets, fountains and slides to count as a small waterpark. Within the outer defensive wall was a seven car garage, across a patio from the main entrance. Inside were seven bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a huge living area, separate dining area, restaurant level kitchen, dojo, private theater, a park (too big to be called a lawn), and a 3D arena they'd love to call a holodeck but was rather more limited, that last to be used for training purposes he was sure.

Each bedroom was in reality its own suite, with private bath, sitting room, closet and sleeping chamber. The library, laundry facilities, and computer labs were all shared, though with sufficient room for everybody, and no law kept anybody from keeping a computer or books in their room.

As designed, the breakdown of rooms was three for girls, three for boys, and one master suite. Misato had already moved into the master bedroom, and Jared didn't mind. He selected one of the boy's rooms for himself, one with an empty room on either side so that it gave greater isolation even though the soundproofing was in theory enough so that you could play a loud stereo in one and not disturb the next one over. The bathrooms had water-sealed cupboards, a drain in the floor, and a pressure hose for ease of cleaning.

The house had to have cost a pretty penny, he was sure. It was also his design, that much was obvious. So why had they built it?

He wandered down into the shop and took a plate of brass from the stock left there. Powering up tools, he soon had a plaque which read "Beautiful, Stately, SkyLord Manor" and went and secured it to the post beside the main gate. He was about to enter again and unpack his boxes when Ritsuko pulled up in a borrowed van.

Jared shot her an eyebrow raise, unaware of how much he'd thawed since beginning to explore this place. Ritsuko noted it, and began a comfort giving reply grin. "Well, like the new house?"

He scanned the place once more. It was lovely. "Why did they make it?"

~To please you, of course.~ But she didn't say that. Ritsuko instead parked her van and got out, opening the side door to reveal boxes. "Say, want to help me move in?"

Jared regarded her curiously. "Won't I be living with Misato and Rei any more?"

~Gotcha,~ she thought. ~There are bonds forming already. And *you're* thawing nicely, too. We'll get you back in that Eva yet, Jared.~ Outwardly, the doctor shrugged. "I think Rei told you. I'll be moving in with you and she and Misato to help on rent."

Again he beheld the mansion. Even together there was no way they were affording rent on something like this, not if they ate nothing but what they could scrounge from the hills and sold everything down to their clothes. There was something up. He began to reach for a box.

"Careful," the doctor stopped him. "That one's full of medical textbooks. You don't want to be lifting something that heavy."

The redhead shrugged, certain he could've handled the weight, but willing to let it slide. He cocked his head at her. "Books? Do they go in the library, your room, or do you need them by your computer? The library and the computer room are next to each other, so it's not a long walk."

Ritsuko blinked down at the youngster. "Library? Computer room? How big is this place anyway?"

He motioned slightly that she could check it out.

She did.

Jared followed her, enjoying the sensory overload the woman was experiencing. It was obvious she'd held no clue, even driving up to the door with her things in boxes, just what she was moving into. Seeing her stop cold and stare out the balcony over their pool was interesting and amusing at the same time. Pen Pen warbled with penguin laughter as he made first acquaintance with the water slides.

~I had no idea the kid's plans were so grand.~ Ritsuko's eyes were wide. ~I guess I should have made time to look at them, instead of just listening to Katsuragi explain them.~

~I had no idea the good doctor shocked so well.~ Jared thought smugly, beginning to lose the icy demeanor he'd cultivated over the last week. Ritsuko sat down, hardly even noticing.

While she was still in shock, Rei came in bearing the sole box that held all her worldly goods. Stopping, she looked at Jared. "Please direct me to my room."

He nodded.

In the week they had stayed together, they'd worked out a minimum-word sort of communications theory that still said an awful lot. Something about shared silence could be awfully communicative, it only required each side to do an awful lot of presuming. He led her to the women's side, to the first room, knowing that if offered the choice the nearest would be what she'd have taken. But it was also the closest to the pool and it made him feel good to do that for her, giving her convenient access to a treasure like that.

It had been a very long time since he'd made these shields of uncaring that he now wore, and he was finding they didn't fit all that well anymore.

On the other hand, they'd never been meant to hold out people who were prying at his shell. They were meant as protections against the uncaring and cruel hordes, never the persistent friends. But still, he'd done a great deal of growing, emotionally and physically, since he'd last worn the 'leave me alone, I don't exist in this plane of reality' defense.

Impulsively, he gave Rei a hug.

She blinked at him inquiringly.

He melted enough to shrug. "Action described as a hug: to encircle a loved one as a gesture of care and affection. Used to denote approval and provide emotional reward or support. Affection: a positive bond between two people, often described as a feeling of warmth or belonging, always denotes a positive feeling. Love, the strongest form of bond between two people, available in many types as suited to the scenario. Described as the greatest force in life. Cautionary note: Love, once developed, is not easily dispelled. The blockage of love once it has been established is renown for causing great emotional pain. It should also be noted that the result of successful love is so rewarding all this is considered a minor risk worth taking. Precursor to love is acceptance of that other person, followed often by the application of affection as a trial. The actual development of love is a mystery, yet it appears to generate spontaneously under favorable circumstances. Growth of love can be compared to that of a plant; seedlings too small to notice can become towering growths of significant presence. All love must be maintained or it will suffer deterioration or even death, with the aforementioned pain. Again, most consider this an agreeable risk."

Rei blinked again, once. "Understood."

Aww, who was he kidding? The silent robot routine just was *not* him anymore! He gave her another hug, speaking as he held her. "This unit requires significant maintenance on routine basis to perform at optimum levels. Love and all derivative and associative positive emotions are the required fuel, performing dual duty as maintenance as well. Requirements for these are unusually high to offset damage sustained to system defined as 'self-worth' during childhood. Self Worth is a continuing background function allowing smooth operation of all other processes, damage to same can impair or halt any and all other operations."

Rei looked at him. "How is this function repaired?"

Jared gave her a slight smile, loving being able to talk with her and be understood, even if he was breaking with the word quota they'd established. "All human systems are self correcting within the limits of their design. When those tolerances are exceeded, mass infusions of the derivative subset can encourage system regeneration. Requirements and specifics are unknown, being unique in each case. Guidelines can be established, but are not easily communicated. Observation is key."

Rei nodded, once. "Thank you."

He thought about it, then cocked his head at her, a gesture he'd not used in a week. "Subject Rei appears to have underdeveloped emotional understanding and response. Suspect cause is malnourishment of emotional centers by discouraging the feeling of same. Recommended course of remedy; observation of others for data gathering, trial use of new emotions for experimental purposes, preparatory to full scale implementation."

She didn't respond, but her eyes flicked past him. He turned around to see both Misato and Ritsuko standing in the doorway.

"Action described as a hug?" Ritsuko asked him.

"Damage to self worth?" Misato echoed.

He just blinked at them expressionlessly.

OoOoO

Gendo sat in a darkened room with holograms of the other members of SEELE.

"Now about this house that you've prepared for your son..."

"HOUSE? That's a mansion! It compares well with some of our own dwellings!"

A thin and nasal man adjusted his glasses. "Rather a few more bedrooms would be required. Still Gendo, I can't see why you'd waste so large an outlay of funds on a guest cottage to pamper your staff."

As usual, Gendo didn't move from his pose. "It was necessary. The pilot of Unit One had sustained mental trauma. In order to reactivate his unique potential, this was the recommended therapy."

"Giving the boy a spa and private movie theater?"

Light would have frosted Gendo's glasses if they weren't already. He spent hours practicing this pose. "It is not unusual to pamper top athletes. That which on ordinary people would be considered luxuries becomes necessary to offset heavy demands and burdens on their abilities. This is an extension of that. In ten days pilot Saotome showed negligible improvement in a hospital environment. Adjusted living quarters improved that immediately and this new arrangement promises better results still, AND the future potential to reduce or eliminate recurrent episodes."

Give Gendo an inch and he could justify anything. They spent the remainder of that meeting making empty complaints about Unit One's changes that wouldn't come to any effect anyway.

OoOoO

Jared was lounging in the comfortably furnished parlor reading a book when Ritsuko and Misato came upon him. Ritsuko leveled a glare. "Jared, we've come to tell you we've decided to send you to school, starting today. Umm, what is that you're reading?"

He looked up from the Complete Illustrated Handbook of Mankilling Cyborgs And What You Can Do To Defeat Them. "Hmm?"

Misato dropped the briefcase she'd been carrying on a nearby footstool and knelt beside him, taking a look at the hardbound book over his shoulder. "Wow. Where do you find this stuff?"

Jared shrugged. "Just your ordinary bookstore. You'd be surprised what they carry, I know I am." He reached down beside him into the Operations Pack (for those missions where neither the Standard Light Urban nor the Auxiliary Light Urban Survival Packs would get you through), and out of the well-built if ordinary backpack (or what looked to be one) he withdrew something and handed it to her.

Misato stared down at the thing in her hands. "The Doctor Ritsuko Akagi Swimsuit Calender?" She flipped it open. The present month had the good doctor in a red bikini and holding the straps of her top loose while she stared in a 'come hither' way at the camera.

Misato stared at her good friend. "Uh, Rits?"

"Give me that!" The good doctor screamed, outraged, seizing the item. She looked it over, shaking with rage. Her eyes bugged when they found February and her in a white one piece, soaking wet and transparent, with only whipped cream concealing her privates.

"Okay, tell me where you got this! I want to know what perverted maniac came up with this prank!"

Jared stared at Ritsuko who was shaking the calender at him. He blinked with total innocence, which was of course faked. "I don't know what you're talking about, Ritsuko. I just saw it when I was on my way out of the bookstore. They had a pile of them."

Burning red, the doctor retreated to make some phone calls.

Misato enjoyed some giggles, then got down to business. "Okay Jared, you're going to be starting school today. We want you to interact with other children your age. So, I've got you some books, and some paper and computer disks in here." She handed him the ordinary school briefcase.

He waved it off. "Thanks Misato, but I'll just use my backpack. It's more comfortable for me anyhow."

She nodded. "Okay. Just don't forget your textbooks. Now get changed, I'll be ready to drive you to the station in half an hour, okay?"

There was no avoiding it, nor any clear need to. He nodded. "Okay."

They both left to get ready. Rei then came into the room, noted the calender where it had fallen, selected the current month, and hung it up on a convenient wall. Seeing that she had a few moments, she began to write down their synch test dates upon it.

OoOoO

Misato had been easy to con into driving him all the way to school instead of just a drop off at a train station. Rei was still too unwell to come along, but had waved him bye for the day.

Well, actually, he did it while Rei stood there, but as she didn't walk away he counted that as participation.

So now he got out of the side seat and waved Misato away. With a grin, she drove off, and with that he turned to go enter the building. He had his transfer papers in hand, but they all read his last name as Ikari - something he definitely wasn't willing to tolerate.

However, and here came the good part, Ritsuko had finally gone through enough of her boxes that she turned up the effects that were to be returned to him from his brief stay in the hospital. Blessing the return of the Standard Light Urban Survival Pack to his side, having been absent since it was taken from him during his unconsciousness (one can never be too grateful that one's superspy items looked like normal stuff even under examination - as no one can be awake at all hours), he withdrew the necessary paperwork and dropped by registration.

Yes, it turned out he was to be in the typical class, as always. However, something stopped him on his way there. This was *way* too complicated an assignment to go on without some extra assistance. Sure, he could knock off Gendo, either on night assignment deep penetration mission or just waiting til he got a shot (joining Gendo at his wife's grave marker would work), but while productive, that would fail to resolve the whole problem. That secret organization that placed Gendo at the head of Nerv would simply replace him, with one sure to serve them.

That would throw all his local data out of whack. Not a bad thing if it was productive, but one had to doubt. Men with secret goals and agendas wouldn't insure the survival of the human race. As with Gendo, they could be sure to destroy it.

Hearing the first bell for class, Jared ignored it and whipped out Cell Slicer. Misato had it set up as a local phone, using a Nerv account that they could both watch and reach him at. It was amusing actually, the supertech cellphone tested right in their hands, then back in his it resumed all its secret functions without skipping a beat.

It could even access the account they gave him, though that was by no means its default one. He pressed a series of keys and listened as it linked him to the Agency's phone tree. He'd never actually talked with anyone there, but it was a simple matter to enter his request.

When the redhead saw his response he was torn between despair and elation.

He did some work on his own as preparation, then headed off to class.

OoOoO

Hikari stalked up to Kensuke, who was playing with a model of a fighting vehicle. "Have you heard? There's going to be a new transfer student today. I was hoping to tell Toji, is he coming in today?"

Kensuke left the model drop and shook his head. "I don't think so. He's still kinda shook up over losing his father and all."

The class rep immediately looked miserable on the boy's behalf. "Yeah. It still seems kinda scary, their home on the outskirts getting caught in that avalanche caused by the giant robot fighting. Lucky so many weren't home."

Kensuke nodded somberly. "Yeah. Both he and his sister were out at the arcades, and his grandfather wasn't yet home from the labs. It was only his father that got caught. I hear he'd gotten home from work early and taken some sleeping pills, so he wasn't awake to hear the call of the sirens for us to get in shelters. Say, why are we getting a new transfer student? The military's not hiring and I couldn't think of anyone else who'd want to move into this area."

Hikari shrugged. "All I know is that the transfer papers were filed the day after the robot incident, but that the new student wasn't able to attend. He had some kind of doctor's medical excuse."

The boy straightened his glasses at the class rep. "That sounds awfully suspicious if you ask me. Since when have we been overflowing with transfer students? And to transfer in, then not show up for two weeks... Do you think he could be the robot pilot? Maybe he got injured in the battle."

The girl shrugged. "I guess it could be."

Kensuke turned to his keyboard. "I'm going to see if I can check it out."

OoOoO

Jared breezed into the classroom deep in thought, snagged a chair and let himself relax. The teacher apparently didn't notice him enter, which got him out of either holding buckets or introducing himself, whichever was worse.

He was drawing some stares, which was premature, he thought. Then again, most guys at this place *did* adhere to some form of dress code. Well, not that he'd *forgotten* to so much as chosen not to follow it.

A Ranma-esque Chinese silk fighting outfit *was* a bit unusual, he thought belatedly as the stares intensified. Of course, the sword didn't help matters any. The number of guys who wandered around carrying a katana these days had to be small.

He exhaled a LONG breath.

Using the Cell Slicer, he'd called for reinforcements. What he'd gotten had left him very upset and unsettled. Right now they'd been getting their briefing, then there'd be the things he'd done for them...

His train of thought was interrupted by an elegant, refined woman entering the room and presenting their teacher with an envelope. She had to shake him by his shoulder to get his attention, then smiled as she presented the folder to him. "Professor, you are relieved of duty here."

"Huh?" The old man accepted the envelope by reflex action.

The woman smiled. "Your subjects are biology and history, correct? Well, I'm able to inform you that on the basis of your work, you've been selected to receive a research grant from the Marduke Institute. You are to join an expedition exploring our past among the ruins of the sea floor."

The teacher swiftly examined a handful of the contents of the envelope.

The woman smiled serenely, knowing they agreed with what she said. "So you may leave the class to me today while you prepare for your new career." She gave him a slight bow.

The old teacher saw the line under 'research budget', eyes bulged, and with hurried apologies, he was out the door.

The woman rotated so that she was facing the now silent class. "Good morning. I am to be your new instructor. My name is Doctor Sylia Stingray. Additional teachers are being assigned. You should be having Linna Yamazaki for athletics and dance, Nene Romanova for computers, and Priscilla Asagiri for music and self defense."

Jared's head groaned as he dropped it into his hands, he'd thought he'd gotten *rid* of these guys!

Sylia oriented on him with a smirk. "Doctor Saotome? Is something upsetting you?"

He lifted his face to meet hers. Their eyes locked.

OoOoO

Flashback, their first meeting

OoOoO

Jared stirred to wakefulness.

"Ah, I see that you're waking up."

A cup was pressed into his hand, his nose informed him that it was chocolate. Hands helped him to sit up and he drank. "Thank you, this is very good." Slowly his visual centers came online from a deep recovery cycle. Before him were Linna and Sylia. Priss was at his side helping him with the chocolate.

Sylia addressed him over her folded arms. "I'm glad to see you, Skysaber. Or is it Jared? Which do you prefer?"

"Depends on the costume." He replied automatically.

She smiled. "Exactly as in the series. Jared, I'd like to inform you that you are in a new universe. All your previous exploits are a rather popular animated TV show here. And I'm afraid that puts you at quite a considerable disadvantage."

Jared looked them over. "Where's Nene?"

Linna was startled, but Sylia just smiled. "She's out for the moment. It would appear that you *are* the genuine article. Our scans supported it, and your wings disappeared like they were supposed to, but we had to be sure. Tell me, what have you seen of *our* series. I presume we had one."

He nodded. "You know me very well it would seem. I've seen a few episodes only. Enough to know... um, how long was I out?"

"This is the same evening we found you." Sylia informed him. Priss let him go to support himself.

He stretched his neck muscles, feeling the disappearing wound in his chest. "I wasn't much of a fan. I've only seen a few episodes. However, I *do* own most of the role-playing materials. They're actually more concise on the story than the anime was. I can tell you that in the morning USSD will put an add in the paper offering 20 million to the Knight Sabers for a job. I *have* seen that episode. Would you like to hear it? Because Priss here gets caught without her hardsuit by a handful of boomers. Man, why did I have to land *here*, it's not as if Bubblegum Crisis is the *happiest* anime. Why couldn't it have been the Slayers or something?"

Linna put a hand to her chest in shock. "You don't like us?"

He smiled for her. "It's not that. In spite of Priss' protestations to the contrary you are *all* nice people. It's just that somebody, supporting cast mostly, dies in almost every episode."

"Perhaps you can help us prevent that." Sylia offered sagely.

Priss suddenly became businesslike, addressing her team. "Look, what if this guy really *is* a plant? I mean, false information could drive us right into somebody's hands."

Sylia just cocked an eyebrow at him. Nodding, Jared cupped his palms together and summoned a hologram. On a whim he replayed the entire first tape of BGC, from opening credits to last, doing all the voices himself.

Relaxing, he sighed. "Not proof, I know. But I think that it emphasizes my claim." He got a *very* weird look on his face. "Hey, aren't you all taking this rather calmly? I mean, the bit about explaining universe travel is usually *my* line. What's up with you?"

Linna giggled, then went to a monitor and stuck in a data unit. She keyed the screen and he watched himself running in the park back home, saw the faeries for the first time, then watched as he was introduced to the Tendos.

"That's your first episode." Linna informed him, leaning on the TV.

"Right." Jared said, then passed out.

OoOoO

End Flashback

OoOoO

Sylia smiled upon meeting his eyes. ~Ah, yes. Just like old times.~ She was excited to meet the good doctor once again. They'd worked together so beautifully before. She was looking forward to it again.

Jared shuddered. Oh, he remembered how all this began, all right! He also remembered how it went from there. He still had nightmares of how close they'd gotten him to breaking the law of Chastity!

OoOoO

Another Annoying Flashback

OoOoO

"Do you know what a sexaroid really is? No, of course you don't. Not only are the models themselves highly illegal but their construction particulars are one of Genom's best kept secrets. Sylia, your father's first boomer designs used a deceased human brain for the central processing core. Since then most boomers have been wholly inorganic for ease of construction, maintenance, and moral issues. Well, with the sexaroid series they went the other way."

Jared brought up a hologram detailing design plans and schematics. "Neural tissue and an organic structure are built around a frame of artificial organs, false skeletal framework, wire and circuitry. Vat grown via acceleration enzymes and surgically altered before 'birth.' We are essentially and functionally identical to people who have received a fair amount of heavy invasive cybernetic and neuralware replacement."

He grinned sadly. "That and the fact that a sexaroid has her past programmed into her and comes with a full set of skills designed to please somebody too cruel, too jaded or pathetic to attract a normal woman."

"So what you're saying is..." Linna didn't know how to finish.

"Human brain in a boomer body." Jared hopped up to a seat on the desk. "Kinda blurs the line between what is human and what isn't, doesn't it? It's the organic makeup and design that makes a typical sexaroid so hard to detect on anything set to scan for boomers. Plus, real human feelings, emotions and whatnot aren't easy to program. Far more easy to generate and, I suppose, satisfying to a customer who was after this sort of thing in the first place. There are more than a few problems with a standard boomer setup for something as intricate and exacting as sex. They take a human brain grown across a chassis of neural control systems and they've got a perfect, obedient slave who can..."

"Enough already!" Priss shouted, coming to her feet.

Jared calmed, looking down, ashamed. "Sorry. I tend to rant, and this subject upsets me, so I rant more. I was trying to explain that if you remove the inhuman parts then you've got a real, *whole* human being. One with feelings, loves and cares just like anybody."

"And who better to do that than the man who pioneered the study of generating cloned organs from genetic blueprints for the replacing of cyborg parts?" Sylia rhetorically asked.

"I was motivated." Jared answered honestly. "They've got the genes. All my friends needed was a little garbage pulled out of their skulls, live organs in the place of plastic and some bone replacement. The last was easily enough done with nanites. Now there isn't a test in the world that will reveal them as anything but some ordinary human girls with a slight amount of augmentation." He blushed. "Well, and the fact that I took the liberty of upgrading their ordinary functions to where they're quite exceptional. The Laser Angels are as fit as Olympic athletes, quick as eels, and have been training in martial arts extensively for years. But all that is normal tissue."

"What else did you slip in there?" Nene grew suspicious.

Jared glanced both ways, it was clear he was caught. "Um, they're toxin resistant, have a killer immune system and renewing cell structures that help them heal fast and will potentially prolong their lives and youth indefinitely. All stuff Washu did to me. I didn't dare try for the whole deal with powers and everything. Besides, you probably need the maas and equipment that doesn't exist in this galaxy to add things like energy swords and the flight power."

"So you just made them healthier..." Sylia summarized.

The redhead nodded. "Yah, pretty much."

"And could easily do the same to us." She finished.

His jaw was not the only one to drop open. Everyone stared at her at the end of that statement. Jared scratched behind his head. "Um, you *do* know that... um.. well..."

Sylia smiled sagely. "Undressing for medical exams is nothing new for us."

The redheaded scientist turned his back, blushing furiously. "Okay. But, to be bluntly honest, I wasn't worried *quite* so much about you as the fact that you're all extremely attractive and... uh..." *gulp*. "I'm not entirely *comfortable* around naked women."

"You worried you might rape us?" Priss asked smugly.

He looked back at her. "I don't think so. If I had any kind of outlet for those sorts of feelings it wouldn't be a problem. As it is, I'm going to have my mind swimming in a hormonal stew of male imperatives and I'm worried about the damage it will do to *me!* I live by a strict moral code and prefer to live without endangering that. I know I'd be a very long time forgiving myself if I transgressed it."

Priss was taken aback. That was *not* a typical male answer!

Actually it wasn't a typical any kind of answer.

Linna leaned forward a little. "Are you saying that we can't have, what was it? An indefinite lifespan, toxin resistance, augmented physical powers and freedom from sickness all because we'd give you a HARD ON?" She stood up and confronted him. "Look, *I'D* sleep with you if that's what you wanted."

He attempted to react as if a blush were not in total control of his face. "Thank you, Linna. I appreciate the offer. I do not, in any way, find you not perfectly acceptable. However, I am restricted by my own moral code from engaging in any such activities with anyone to whom I am not married."

Suddenly, Linna found a blush stealing over HER face.

Sylia looked down at her hands. "I'm afraid that would be in violation of the Knight Saber's agreement."

"Yeah." Nene chuckled, finding a joke in that. "It goes against rule three: Do not perform any action without involving all of the members."

Outrage flitted over faces until it was swiftly replaced by laughter.

Jared laughed, relief painting his entire face. He sagged against a desk. "Oh, I needed that. Thanks, Nene. You are a treasure."

Linna found *her* good humor restored. "What about rule two? All agreements must be binding on all members of this organization?"

"That usually gets simplified down to: Do not act upon a personal urge." Sylia was smiling too.

Jared was back to blushing again.

Nene wasn't about to let a good joke go this far without completing it. "And what about: All equipment gets shared equally among all the members of this organization? I'm sure Jared's *unique* contribution wouldn't be fair if *only* Linna got to enjoy it."

Priss was kicking back with her arms crossed but was finding Jared's helpless embarrassment too silly to get outraged at. Her lips quirked in a smile as she joined in the teasing. "I'm sure he'd add new meaning to rule eight." She sat up and made a ridiculously flirtatious gesture. "Keep in *contact* with another member regularly?"

Jared smiled weakly. "Remember what I said about a hormonal stew? I think I'd better find someplace safe from the antics of lovely ladies I find far too desirable for my own good. Excuse me, please."

He snatched up his work papers and was gone.

"Hard to get." Nene pouted, not amused that her joke had been ruined.

The silence became unbearable.

"I hate getting sick all the time." Was all Linna could think to offer. "Shouldn't there be some way to convince him?"

Priss kept looking at the door he'd exited through.

Nene breathed heavily. "And I was looking forward to the other things, too. Do you know a person with higher muscle tone gets to eat *more* chocolates and sweet things because their body can metabolize it faster? I could have cake *and* be good in combat like you guys."

Linna looked around at her friends. "Look, all that stuff, I don't know *I'm* willing to pass it up. Is this a choice between having a killer bod for the next ten thousand years or being a Knight Saber? Isn't there some way around this?"

"He doesn't feel comfortable seeing us in the buff." Priss summarized, still looking at the door.

Nene flounced her hands onto hips. "Well, I can't say I'd ever been turned down for something because I was *too* good looking!"

Sylia looked up from having been studying her hands. "Ladies, I'd like to call for a vote."

"On what?" Linna was echoed by both others.

Sylia stood up, pacing back and forth. "On the rule against getting involved with any man. The *intent* of the rule was to avoid having anything in a Knight Saber's life that would be more important to her than this organization. We still have to follow that. However, I never had any thought when I'd first laid that rule down that we would be faced with this kind of decision. Linna does have a point. Making the choice between an indefinite lifespan with great health and remaining a member is something that I think we'd all succumb to over time." Sylia brought herself around to face her coworkers. "Once it became clear that, if it were the case, he would *still* feel uncomfortable around the naked body of any woman save his wife... Well, he hasn't said that's a problem so let's not go borrowing trouble."

Priss had remained laid back in her chair.

"You're afraid that he might not perform the procedure except on the one he was married to?" Linna asked.

"Like I said, let's not go borrowing trouble." Sylia repeated. "But I could see such a thing turning us against each other in short order. We've got to find some way to avoid that."

"So what do we do?" Nene looked about at all her friends. "I don't want to wait until we're over fifty so he'd not be attracted to us any more."

"He did this for his team." Priss observed. "Why couldn't he do it for us?"

"We were still fairly innocent." Lou said from the door.

She entered and said. "Sorry, just came to deliver this data disk you'd asked for. But I overheard your question. The answer is that for the first years of our partnership he was a great deal more mature and knowledgeable than the rest of us. That seemed to engage his protective instincts and he's been treating us like younger sisters. We're presently trying to convince him that younger sisters not related by blood are perfectly acceptable soul-mates. But that may take some time. Anyway, when it *does* work we are already agreed to share him. Goodnight."

Lou closed the door behind her.

There was silence in the room for several minutes.

Sylia looked at those around her. "Any threat to the unity of the Knight Sabers must be dealt with. We have got to come to a united decision about what to do about this. It has got to work together for ALL of us, so that we each get the upgrade, and so that we stay Knight Sabers."

No one spoke for half an hour.

"We could.." Linna hesitated, unsure of her answer yet having thought of nothing else and needing to break the silence. "We could..."

"Share him?" Priss asked. She folded her arms behind her head and blew hard up at the ceiling.

Nene drummed her ankles against the desk she sat on.

"If we accept that as a possible answer," Sylia spoke up, not lifting her face as yet. "What are the problems about it?"

There was a great stirring in the room as everyone shifted to get more comfortable.

"Reduced panty prices." Nene giggled, trying to fight the tension. "We'd all be related to the store owner."

"Less chance that time would break the group up." Linna was staring at the far corner of the wall, away from meeting anyone in the eyes. "We were all going to retire someday. This puts that off. We'd already have a husband and wouldn't have to spend time looking for them. One would keep us together where four would split us apart."

"It'd be easy to find baby-sitters." Nene snickered.

Priss blew out a wad of air she'd been holding. "We all already know how to work together. I can live with you guys' faults."

"Cheaper living expenses." Linna offered. "Only one kitchen, laundry duties we could share. Not to mention rent on four apartments is killer expensive."

"I could handle the legal side of it. The Diet would never know the bill they passed wasn't their own." Nene discovered that she was joking far less than she'd thought she'd been.

"You know, working together like this we could actually travel. I could go on tour." Priss speculated.

"I could loan you the money, even sing back up." Linna wondered. "Do you think Nene would work on keyboard?"

Both singers turned to evaluate the suddenly silent redhead.

"Special effects computers at least." Priss announced. "Probably keyboard. We'd have to try her out and see."

"You might really like it." Linna offered to her stunned AD Police friend.

"So," Sylia summarized, standing up. "Do any of you think we should *not* go through with this?"

There was a vast silence.

"Do *you* not want to?" Nene asked.

"My life isn't exactly overflowing with marriage proposals." Linna suggested.

Priss looked to either side of herself. "I could live with having a couple sisters." She stretched, and smiled. "And the idea of not having the group break up is almost as good as having a band in the family or never having another cold."

"Don't *you* feel comfortable with it?" Linna pressed Sylia.

The leader of the Knight Sabers played with her watch while looking about the room. Then she ducked her head and smiled. "I had been thinking all of you would be harder to convince." She admitted.

"Well, it *is* illegal." Nene considered. "Still," she shrugged perkily. "That doesn't make it a bad thing to do."

Sylia agreed. "I couldn't think of another way to keep us together in the face of this problem, and I'll admit to being surprised at how this unconventional idea adds to our group's overall stability. We all want the upgrade and none of us appear to find the man *unattractive*. So I guess that it works out."

OoOoO

End Flashback

OoOoO

The Knight Sabers, the five former sexaroids that formed his Laser Angels, all those girls trying to marry or just sleep with him... Seeing Sylia's expression, Jared fought an urge to turn tail and run.

The predatory gleam was back in her eye.

Sylia, for her part, just smiled. The First International Skysaber Hunt was about to begin a new round. She still had to... *reward* the man who'd destroyed Genom.

Dr. Stingray licked her chops.

Hikari raised her hand. "Excuse me, teacher? I'm the class representative, and I'm afraid the new student hasn't introduced himself yet."

Sylia smiled at him.

He groaned, flopping his head onto his arms.

Licking her chops, and wiping the drool delicately from the corner of her mouth, Sylia remarked. "Well, I find that interesting. But easily remedied. Doctor Saotome, would you care to introduce yourself?"

He waved a hand in the negative.

She smiled, moving over beside the desk. "Well, in that case, I may have to."

He shot out of his seat, turning an end over flip in mid air to land beside the teacher before the chalkboard facing the class. Quickly, he bowed. "I am Jared Saotome." He shot a glance to his side to see Sylia standing by. "And all of the rest is classified."

The class absorbed this with a sweatdrop.

Kensuke raised a hand. "Excuse me, does this mean that you're the pilot for the giant robot?"

Sylia shot him a curious glance.

Jared squeezed his eyes shut. "Yes, it is a hard thing to hide, isn't it?" 


	3. Chapter 3

Otaku Reflected  
Episode Three, Eva Revolution

Part Three  
A Superspy in School

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

Jared had to go into ditzy anime fanatic mode all over again just to answer the class' questions regarding him and the Eva. Fortunately, on receipt of his superspy gear he'd instantly reviewed that battle, and a loose tongue here would mean his story would be the one entering general use.

It irked him that he'd gotten that emotionally thwacked over nothing, though. His plans had succeeded, even so far as the elemental attacks and the S2 organs.

"What's it called?" Eager voices pressed him.

The redhead crossed arms confidently. "Well, all giant androids are classed according to their main weapon. Mine started as a simple Muscle Knight, meaning that physical attacks were the best it could do. But in the battle it gained extra power."

Kensuke typed this all in the background.

"So what's it called now?" Two cute girls wanted to know.

He posed, not so dramatically, but more dashing. "The Thunder Knight!"

"Cool!" A boy pressed forward through the crowd. "So does this mean that its main attack is electric?"

Jared nodded. "Yup! I used lightning bolts to paralyze the creature, the Dark Warrior, that was attacking us." He smiled and put his arms behind his head, cocking a grin down at his fellow students. "So far Thunder Knight is the only elemental level Knight in the world. All the others are still only Muscle Knights."

"That makes yours the most powerful, right?"

"Got it in one."

"Wow!"

"So where *are* the other knights?"

Jared shrugged. "One's in Germany, I know that. The United States has two. I don't know about many others. We've got another Muscle Knight here, but there was some trouble activating it."

Kensuke looked up from frantic record keeping of this conversation. This was too juicy an issue to pass up! "Trouble? What sort of trouble?"

"How did you get picked to pilot?" A girl pressed.

One of her obvious friends chirped up. "Yeah, did you have to take a test?"

The redheaded robot jock looked a trifle abashed, and tried to answer them all at once. "Only kids of a certain age can pilot one. You'd all qualify, but I don't know that you'd want to. Piloting a Knight it feels like it's your own body, and the Dark Spawn we fight can injure you. You really feel the wounds. I'm a martial artist, I can handle a few blows. But Rei got hurt real bad in a malfunction trying to pilot her Muscle Knight."

"You mean REI is a pilot?" There was a certain amount of awe over this.

Jared deliberately drooped a bit. "Yeah. She's really my half-sister, you know? We were chosen to be pilots because of our high natural ability, a little over the norm. We don't know each other all that much, we haven't seen each other since we were small. But I hear that she's really led a tough life, and that's why she's as withdrawn as she is."

There was some instant sympathy over this and some girls resolved to be Rei's friend from then on, once she showed back up that is.

"Wow! You're *SO* brave!" One of the girls cheered.

"Were you even a little scared?" Another young lady asked.

Hearing that, Sylia had to grin in the background. ~Him? Not Likely. No one who could face a boomer without a hardsuit would faint over such a small peril.~

Kensuke pressed forward. "You mean there's a chance that they might not have a pilot for the Muscle Knight they've got left over? If Rei got injured that is."

Jared looked up, mentally ticking another twist in Gendo's grimy shorts. "You mean you might be willing to pilot, Mr. Aida?"

"Would I EVER!" The boy shouted. "Do you think there's a chance? That I could, I mean? I'd give anything to be able to pilot an Elemental Knight into battle!"

Sylia stepped in an intervened. "Now class, that is quite enough. If you will all return to your seats, we will begin today's lesson. Doctor Saotome?"

Jared stopped on his way back to his seat. "Yes, Doctor Stingray?"

She smiled. "Would you and your classmates appreciate some accelerated teaching methods? I could easily arrange for them."

He thought about it. She could, at that. He turned back to regard the class. "What do you guys think about it? Doctor Stingray here is the head of the Marduke Institute, she's here to oversee my training. What she's offering is the chance for all of you to experience a little something different from your average school experience."

Sylia moved around to the front of her desk and sat on the edge of it elegantly. "The standard class day would be renovated somewhat, and we'd have to add new facilities. In a nutshell, some of the billion-yen equipment we've developed to enhance and educate Dr. Saotome would also be made available to you."

Jared found himself sliding near to her, presenting solidarity for the class. "That boils down to some highly sophisticated computers programming basic school subjects into your brain directly, with no study time, and using the remainder of the day to study physical skills like dance, martial arts, gymnastics, and so on."

Dr. Stingray continued her smile sidelong at her companion. "We would also bring in simulators. Possibly a form of paintball as well. Necessary training for you, dear pilot, and the competition could do you some good."

Jared found himself smiling smugly at the class. "In short, picture half the day getting expert attention by instructors trying to *teach* you something, then the other half playing games."

"We wouldn't be required to pilot, would we?" Hikari asked nervously.

Sylia made a simple negatory gesture. "That would not be necessary for any of you. However, you would be assisting Dr. Saotome in his studies, which would potentially help save all the Earth." She raised her head and addressed the class with cool yet amused eyes. "It would also guarantee you all scholarships and acceptance to the universities of your choice upon graduation."

OoOoO

"I'm serious!" Ritsuko shouted into the phone. "The only place some of those photos could have come from was some of our private 'research' sessions together! If you didn't leak them, who did?"

Gendo calmly replied. "Calm yourself, doctor. I'll expect you in my office in half an hour. We'll discuss it there." Hanging up on Ritsuko, Gendo pressed another button. After one ring it was answered by the long haired bridge crewman.

"Yes sir?"

"Reschedule the synch tests for our pilots to today, after school." Gendo muttered. ~That should give the good doctor a distraction while I see who could have access enough to leak those files.~

The bridge crewman nodded. "Understood, sir." Then, as the boss hung up, turned and marked the notations on his Doctor Akagi Swimsuit Calender, hanging next to his desk.

"Have you seen April?" The crewman next to him asked.

"Perverts." Maya muttered. What had Dr. Akagi been thinking? Had she needed the money? Was that why she'd posed for that? Could her mentor have cash flow problems? But how could that be, her salary was generous... unless, could Doctor Akagi possibly have a drug problem?

OoOoO

A book publishing supervisor checked the work roster for the day and discovered a new rush job on the logs. Sighing, the man queued up the presses and began to work the crew to begin their machinery. In a normal situation, he wouldn't have even glanced at the material, but four separate times the distributing department called down to check on the status. Apparently they were back ordered already and they hadn't even printed the thing yet. Someone made an executive decision and doubled, then tripled, and finally multiplied by ten the original order.

That got the man curious enough to look at a copy as it came out of binding.

He shrugged. No wonder they wanted it *now*. The thing was written by that Nerv guy, Gendo Ikari. Anything by someone related to a present crisis like he was would sell like there wasn't any yesterday or tomorrow either. At least the cover featuring the guy with the steepled fingers and glinting glasses was creepy enough to push sales along.

Losing all interest, the supervisor tossed the copy of "Advanced Backstabbing and How To Betray Just About Anybody" onto the rollers.

OoOoO

To give Gendo credit, having the Marduke Institute made up of dummy corporations gave him a great deal of autonomy and control. After all, they agreed with whatever he said. That made furthering his own plots a great deal easier in a number of ways. But a weakness inherent in all structures of lies is they belong to whomever tells the best lie, not necessarily the one who thought he was the owner.

So Jared had redirected control over to the Knight Sabers.

All it took was a few minutes work on the Cell Slicer, previous to the lady's arrival (as something of a welcoming gift), and Sylia Stingray was now the primary stockholder of all those corporations, if not the outright owner. Offices were being opened, new employees brought on by hiring agencies according to specifics sent by mail and certified fax. Orders for equipment and supplies were being filled and new factories opened, all certified by independent inspectors hired via voice mail with money provided through generous bank accounts.

In short, they were no longer dummy companies. They were real, thus considerably harder for Gendo to steal back. It was hard to tell someone their company didnt exist when all these employees were running about with jobs in their offices, wearing security badges, and filing income tax reports.

Jared could have thrown holding corporations in there to conceal the ownership a bit, but that would have defeated the point and provided a weak link for Gendo to exploit and reassert control, which he might well still try to do.

Especially when product came rolling off the production lines.

As a backup he also restarted Green Corporation, the backdrop for his own Laser Angels and foil he'd used to harass the bad guys by denying them several key markets. It would make an interesting fall back should Gendo find a way to destroy or discredit Stingray Enterprises. Two weapon style: The obvious and the hidden, it was one way to work. As before, Green corp would cover innocuous yet vital basics, and the 'dirty' companies would start to churn out everything from electronics to construction to warfare.

On that thought, the UN was currently looking over a proposal by a member of the Marduke Institute (and, incidentally, one of Sylia's wholly-owned companies) to produce a series of unmanned autotanks, including rapid-response, air-droppable types, main battle versions and indirect fire support. The concept was cheap, rapidly deployable and rapidly replaceable frontline units that could delay an angel's approach and test its defenses without cost in human lives. Another company, incidentally *also* wholly owned by Dr. Stingray, had jumped on the idea (hint, hint) providing a report detailing air units to supplement the land ones, including both transports, gunships and fighter craft, presenting a unified combat front with the ground units.

The price was attractive and he expected both to land at least trials. New engineers at both companies were downloading software and blueprints now, test machines would be available within a few weeks even counting for setup delays. All these machines had existed in the Bubblegum universe, they just got overshadowed by the more powerful and effective boomers. So the designs were sound, even proven. They ought to prove attractive to a UN whose military power had taken a significant beating, in a world without too many human lives to spare.

And give the Marduke Institute an increased voice in human affairs.

Jared took a bite out of his sandwich. Class had let out a few minutes ago, and all the students left for home. The Cell Slicer had been connected to one of the school desk computers to give him a better keyboard and wider monitor.

Sylia leaned over his shoulder, looking at what he was working on. Ordinarily, this would have caused a game of Space Invaders or something to come up on the screen, but she was listed as an ally for this assignment. "I still think you should employ military combat boomers." She reminded him. "Along with battlemovers. They're far more effective."

The redhead shrugged. "In this case, I'd agree with you aside from two points. One, I'd hate for that kind of tech to fall into SEELE or Gendo's hands, they'd prove worse than Genom with it. And secondly, they're not going to be effective no matter what. We've got an opponent whose shield proves proof against all weapons short of nuclear. They're only there to slow our bad guys down and give us pilots time to react in the BIG mecha."

Sylia took a sip of her herbal tea. "So what you want more than effective frontline combat troops is a reliable rapid deployment system for yourself and the other pilots."

A light came on over his head.

Sylia put down her cup. "Come on, I'll get to work on a micro copter design for you, and use one of those companies to produce it. You'd best be going home" She sighed and shook her head. "I don't normally operate this high-profile, but I suppose it's too late to change anything."

Jared shook himself. "Sorry, this world is due for a global economic collapse anyway whether they survive or not. And we're not sticking around in either case, so I didn't think it mattered."

"It doesn't." She reassured him, then gestured to a data unit as she took over his computer. "Oh, could you look those designs over for me? I'm working on fourth generation hardsuits and any help that you could provide...?"

He smiled sadly, then shook his head. "Sylia, you know that I pick up a different power set in each reality I'm assigned to. I can no longer function as a half-dragon, half angel, Chinese sorcerer. I've lost my Moonlight Knight powers. I'm no longer empowered as a galactic space pirate, and I don't have the killer research and development skills from when I knew you before. I can remember being all that, but the powers aren't online anymore. It's like the key's gone missing from the ignition." He shook his head and shrugged. "I could look over those things, but I don't have the ability right now to develop an entire sub-science for better suit performance overnight. In this reality, in *this* juncture, I am a hotshot mecha pilot who does what can't be done with misunderstood machinery to save the human race from alien invaders and a genocidal madman. That's my power set here."

He cocked his head with a sad smile at her. "I've still got baseline abilities. But right now you'd whip the pants off and spank me on mecha design."

She pursed her lips thoughtfully, disappointed and yet... "That's a suggestion I may have to take to mind."

Jared's hair stood on end and he grabbed his books. "Uh, I gotta go!"

He ran out the school's exit doors and smack into a waiting crowd of classmates. As one, they mobbed him immediately.

OoOoO

The room was dark and moody, providing plenty of shadows and places of concealment. Which made absolutely *no* practical sense as the members of SEELE were all only present through computer link-ups and represented by floating numbered slabs and disembodied voices.

They were the holders of power, not the UN, not anyone that read the papers or scanned the Internet would recognize by name or image. Few knew how old SEELE was, that it had been well entrenched before the Second Impact, or exactly WHAT Keele Lorenz was.

"Rokubungi's son is... interesting," said the slab marked "06" with a certain gift for understatement.

"Rokubungi's son is insane," replied the slab marked "05".

The holographic hovering slab marked "03" hesitated before adding "...but potentially quite useful. IF a means of control can be found."

"He seems quite headstrong and his own father seems to lack control over him," suggested 08 in his best sycophant voice, "perhaps direct control is not the best method for dealing with the boy. Can we even utilize him to control and trigger the Third Impact?"

The slab marked "01" altered, becoming Keele Lorenz in his usual garb. There was a running bet between "05" and "03" as to whether Keele ever changed his clothes or if that visor was a set of bionic eyes or merely a vision enhancement device.

"Manipulation has served us well in the past and will continue to do so. He is a young boy, still feeling the primal urges of adolescence, surrounded by attractive young women. He has his fantasy of being a 'giant robot pilot' out of some cartoon, playing upon this foundation seems reasonable." Chairman Keele's voice brooked no argument.

"Then the thing to do is figure out which angle to approach." 05 said in a droll voice.

OoOoO

"So, why did you come?" Jared asked Ritsuko, who'd intervened in his budding fan club's adulations in order to pick him up in a Nerv staff car.

Ritsuko flexed her fingers at the wheel, obviously angry. "Because Commander Ikari relocated the scheduled synch test to today, that's why. If I'd let you and your friends prance off to the arcade who knows when things would've been accomplished."

"Around dinnertime." He answered honestly with a shrug.

Ritsuko shot him a look out of the corner of her eye. "Are you sure? What if one of those cute girls asked you to go home with her?"

Jared shot her a disbelieving look. "Get real, they're groupies. A necessary aside to emphasize my hero status, but I can only get involved with a main character." He began ticking points off on his fingers. "According to the usual, we've got to start out on a bad foot and grow reconciled. OR, I've got to have a terrible time with other women and melt into her kindness and support. OR, she spends a great deal of time and heartache breaking through my shell because I don't want to get involved. OR, it's a quiet thing that grows stealthily all the while I'm either too involved in my work or failed relationships, until one day we realize that we love each other."

Ritsuko's anger melted into unexpected amusement. "You've really got this worked out, haven't you?" Her eyes returned to the road as she negotiated a turn. "So which one will it be?"

Jared shrugged and put his arms behind his head, speaking honestly. "Beats me. I'm set up for all of 'em. I've got a suitably tragic past, which includes failed relationships and leads to no end of potential plot devices. There are girls I'm not sure I want to kill or kiss, and have *no* idea whether they'd kill or kiss me. Every once in a while I blow off a totally nice girl without meaning to..." He drooped. "Tragic Character Flaw: I can be insanely clueless on some things I'm normally pretty good at."

The doctor found herself smiling. "Not everyone can be so introspective and honest with themselves."

He raised his head to look at her. "It helps with the angst."

"Ahh." She replied wisely, driving on down to where they locked their vehicle into a car train and began their descent into the Nerv geofront.

OoOoO

*Pound!* *Pound!* *Pound!*

"Are you going to come out of there or what?" Misato shouted at the door she was banging on.

"This costume is *dumb!*" Jared's voice protested from within. "I can't even be seen in this getup, much less show off!"

Misato tried the knob, and found it locked. "Quit complaining! You're a boy you know. We shouldn't have this much trouble over the way you dress!"

The door opened, spilling her inside. Jared spoke to her fallen form, from where he was ill-at-ease wearing the plugsuit. "But it's got everything to do with the way that I dress! How you dress has everything to do with how you feel. Take Ritsuko," he motioned to the doctor standing calmly by. "Do you imagine for a minute that her clothing doesn't say things about her?"

Ritsuko glanced down at herself. Fairly standard for her: lab coat and swimsuit.

Jared continued. "I mean, who could dress like that outside her own home? It's plain that she considers herself above the recriminations of others as far as dress code, so she dresses for practicality and comfort; swimming around doing lab tests on giant robots and pockets that she can easily put on or take off. She's *also* got a serious boy happy or she wouldn't be so casual. No woman who's looking would take that laid back a view of anything as vital as her attire. So it's obvious that she's already *got* someone and knows him well enough to feel sure that he doesn't think less of her for it."

Misato sat up and giggled. "You don't know Ritsuko very well, do you? I've known her since college. She's *never* been that interested in boys."

Ritsuko was standing frozen, stock still.

Jared put his back against a wall to lean on. "Says you. That bathing suit advertises her features quite well, thank you." He waved a finger at Misato. "It would be more modest, and her whole look more frumpy if she wasn't interested in boys. It's a defense mechanism, a non-verbal way of saying 'leave me alone' that guys recognize and respect, even if they don't know they're doing it. What she's got now say more to guys 'I'm already caught, aren't you jealous of such a lucky fellow?' That look serves more to build the ego of the guy that has her than to reel in more. No, she's got someone alright."

Misato looked at her friend, and Ritsuko noted the attention and broke her stiff pose, giving her a totally false smile that was meant to reassure and break her suspicions, yet did the opposite.

Jared crouched next to Misato. "And aren't you curious as to why you dress in a way that says 'I'm looking, yet extremely dangerous?' Everything you wear sends a challenge to guys, but promises the rewards only after a real nasty battle - or none at all, depending on who responds to the bait. Frankly, I'd say *you* had a really hot and serious romance that went sour and are on the lookout to replace it."

Both women were staring at him slack-jawed in amazement.

He posed with both hands open, emphasizing his suit. "This plugsuit is in the 'I have no control over what I wear' category that's so strictly utilitarian that it *has* to come from a large institution. It's too weird to be corporate, too nonthreatening to be military. The only things left are scientific or medical. I might as well wear a sign around, saying either escaped mental patient or member of a new field of endeavor so brand new off the drawing boards that we're still trying hard to make it work and can't spare any effort for how it looks."

Misato swallowed. "That's... actually kinda correct."

He lifted an eyebrow and crossed his arms. "But do we have to advertise that? We had those silly code names. THAT changed. Now we've got a stupid dress code. That can change too."

He turned to go back inside.

"Wait! Jared," Ritsuko tried to rally herself. It wasn't easy. ~What was it with this kid?~ She took a deep breath and said. "The plugsuit is specially designed to help you interface with an Eva. There are neural net connectors and other systems that are purely functional. It was meant to aid you as a pilot of Unit One. We don't HAVE any alternative if we want you to succeed in combat!"

His head popped back out. "So how did I?"

"Do you want to cut it that close again?" Ritsuko asked him in all seriousness.

He openly considered this, then shrugged. "Oh well. Now that we've had the test units and know all the theories behind them, we can move beyond such styleless garments and proceed to make something new, unique, classy. After all," a gallantly tossed eyebrow was presented to the girls. "Class is life in these series."

The door closed behind him.

"This kid is going to drive me nuts." Ritsuko said to the closed door.

Misato got up off her backside, rubbing it. "Well, we don't have to worry about his recovery, it seems."

Ritsuko nodded. "Yes, he's well on his way."

Jared came out again dressed in his normal fighting gear.

"I thought I told you to get dressed in the plugsuit?" Ritsuko demanded, finally getting fed up with this.

He shrugged, feigning unconcern. "I thought you told me those were for the final, fighting edge. Don't we just have a test today? I can wait the week for the costume to get redesigned. You didn't have that one hanging on a rack for me when I got here, you made it special. Therefore, make another."

Ritsuko fumed. Seeing this, her friend Misato started dragging people away. "Well, I guess that's right. After all, it's not worth fighting over. C'mon, it's this way."

Jared was waving an arm out of the vise of Katsuragi. "Wait! My Thunder Knight is the other way! You got lost down here last time, remember?"

"Oh, that." Misato shrugged, unconcerned. "I've had two weeks now to get used to this place. Besides, we're not using the Thunder Knight today."

That was enough to make him limp baggage. "We're not?"

Miss Katsuragi gave him a negative grunt. Ritsuko, seeing the pilot's dismay, was satisfied by this minor victory and followed along more peaceably while her friend continued to explain for her charge. "Nobody understands the changes to your Thunder Knight, and so some high up people are pretty scared. They're having it put on ice for awhile while we study it. This time you're going to test out in Unit Zero."

He went limp. "Aw, my Thunder Knight is better." His head snapped up. "Hey wait!"

Captain Katsuragi stopped. "Yes, what is it Jared?"

He struggled out of her arms and went to grab a phone. As he reached one nearby and dialed, he said. "Rei was the one to originally pilot that Muscle Knight, right?"

"Yeah, so what?" Both women breezed up to stand curiously by.

As the phone rang he turned to present to them a serious face. "That means she's its Lady, of course. You *can't* go giving commands to a strange Knight unless it knows you have permission from its Lord or Lady. Don't you know anything?"

Ritsuko blew out a breath of frustration and rolled her eyes while Misato tried hard not to groan. Jared ignored them both and spoke into the phone. "Rei? Hi, it's me." Getting no reaction he calmed down his voice considerably. "You are required to present yourself at the entry station of your Muscle Knight as soon as expediently possible. You are to bring a blue ribbon of approximately three feet in length with you, and wear a dress. A formal one, not a school uniform."

"Understood."

Click.

He dialed again rapidly. "Hello? Bridal Salon? Good, I am Sky Lord. On the authority of the Nerv Security Organization I need you to provide an appropriate dress for a young girl fourteen years of age, and we need it now. A bridesmaid dress would do fine, yes. No, a bouquet will not be necessary, she needs her hands free. Yes. Her hair is pale blue and her eyes are red, whatever you can find that would be matching. Okay, look, do the full set with garland in her hair, matching shoes, silk stockings, the whole bit if you can, but she'll be in a bit of a rush. The van would be fine. One last thing, she will require a blue ribbon at least two but preferably three feet long. You can handle all that? No, you don't have to deliver it, she'll show up in a few minutes. Her name is Rei. Charge it to Nerv. Thanks. Bye."

Leaving both women gaping, Jared vanished off in a cloud of dust.

"Wait!" Misato called, running after him. "What did you just do that for? How can you be sure Rei will even go there?"

He spun around to face them while Ritsuko coughed. His hands found their way to his hips as he replied jauntily. "Rei is four minutes, thirty five seconds away from that shop by taxi, which she will take as speed was specified. It lies on the most direct route between our house and the train station to get here, which she will take as the drop shafts are not yet complete. There are two reasons she will stop in that shop specifically." He raised a finger. "One, is that it requires the least deviation from her standard course, and so the least loss of time. Two, a bridal boutique can be counted on to have ribbons aplenty, which transforms two stops into one, saving more time." He winked at them. "Besides, formal was never fully specified. She will lean on the side of caution, going for the most formal to be found within a reasonable amount of time. Simple. Direct. Efficient. Rei."

He vanished in record time.

OoOoO

Rei stood on the umbilical bridge before Unit Zero (freshly removed from cryostasis only that morning, on order from Gendo) in a gorgeous sky blue gown that was a trifle long for her, and a little over the top.

One could see the dressmakers' care even amidst their haste. Rei's hair had been brushed out and pinned back with a red rose behind each ear. The side of her face where her eye was bandaged had a veil draped diagonally across, hiding that feature. There was a light brush of lipstick and makeup on her features, probably from some storeworker's own purse supply, and the ends of her hair evened out in what looked like a good job in spite of what had to have been a terrible rush.

The hem of the dress was a little long, brushing against the ground instead of floating along, but it had long, mutton leg sleeves and concealed every bandage while at the same time being just darling. Her bodice and skirt shimmered with silk.

Ritsuko couldn't believe this was happening.

Misato was having fun.

Jared made an entrance dressed in a very cavalier fashion, literally. Give him a little lace and he would have passed for a musketeer. He had on a rapier cape over a doublet and elegantly flashy pants tucked into high top boots, done primarily in white and spiced tastefully with every color in the rainbow.

Ritsuko's eyes went wide. "Where does this guy get all his getups?"

Jared crossed over to Rei.

"What is the purpose of this function?" She asked of him.

He bowed to her, then kissed her hand and rose. "Dear sister, it was our mother who designed the primary operating principles behind these giant robots and tested the very first of them. She has since passed on, but I am their premier pilot, and thus can say without fear of valid contradiction they operate on levels others do not understand."

Doctor Akagi's hair stood out. "How do you know about that?" She shouted.

He gave her a condescending glance. "Don't be gauche. I was there. I remember quite well my mother entering that thing and never coming back out." He turned his attention back to Rei. "One of those is that they answer best to one master only. You are the first to pilot this, therefore it answers your commands above all others. In order to be an effective test pilot for it today, I need your permission. More importantly, the Knight needs to know you've given me permission."

Rei stood there in an unemotional way that wouldn't be taken for agreement in any normal person, but counted so for her. "How is this done?"

He waved a hand airily. "Simply enough. You state your willingness or otherwise to grant me permission such that I can pilot it, state whatever clauses or conditions as you so choose, anything else as you may desire, and as symbol of this you affix to me your token. In this case the ribbon."

She blinked unemotionally, then raised the shimmering length of vibrant blue in her hand and tied it calmly around his upper arm.

He tsked and stopped her.

Regarding him, she nodded, taking a step back and addressing him. "I grant you my permission to pilot my Knight, and do so unconditionally." Then she stepped forward and began to tie the ribbon.

OoOoO

Ritsuko broke into Gendo's private section of the command center in a panic. "Did you hear what he said?"

Gendo didn't look up from where he was watching the monitors. "It is impossible for him to know the source of Rei's origin. That is simply impossible. There must be another explanation."

Ritsuko stood panting for several moments while Gendo continued watching the monitors. "What should..."

"Be silent. And listen."

OoOoO

Misato was blinking in wonder as Rei hugged Jared, and he hugged her back. Then Rei dropped her arms. "Was that use correct?"

He nodded. "Yes, and appropriate."

That was enough for both of them.

"Hey Jared," Misato crowded close. "How... I mean, what makes you suspect that Ayanami is your sister? You two don't look a bit alike."

He rotated to face her, presenting a photograph of Yui Ikari, comparing it to Rei's face. "Two reasons. One, while I was in the hospital with her I noted the resemblance, and since no one was using your DNA comparison software I made the match. And Two, things like this *always* happen in these series!"

OoOoO

"Ouch..." Ritsuko mumbled from where she'd face faulted.

Gendo smiled grimly, pursing his hands closer together. ~So, my son is resourceful. I'll have to take care not to underestimate him.~

OoOoO

Misato was blinking. "But how could that be? You're both the same age, and you have different birth dates. That leaves out twins, and since it's your *mom* that's shared one of you sure isn't illegitimate."

Jared posed triumphantly, shouting to the ceiling. "Yes! And obviously this was all a secret plot by a most heinous and secretive bad guy! Who no doubt..." He trailed off and blinked helplessly.

"No doubt what?" Rei blinked inquisitively.

Jared noted Misato was busy looking stricken and rubbed his chin. "Well, actually the possibilities are too numerous to list. Our mom might have had an identical sister no one knew about, making us cousins instead of siblings. I could have been through a time warp or something. Either of our birth records might've been dealt with as part of a heinous plot. Of course, you might be an alien grown to full size within a short time like a few weeks and are only *simulating* my mother's DNA..."

OoOoO

"Erg..." Ritsuko had freshly face planted on the floor.

Gendo frowned.

OoOoO

"What is it?" Rei inquired.

Jared slapped a fist into his palm. "I've got it! You leave a mess in the kitchen, which no robot would *ever* do! The answer is obvious! One of us is a clone!"

OoOoO

The floor shuddered as several simultaneous facefaults were made. Ritsuko came to her feet shouting. "I don't believe it! How could an IDIOT like that jump through all the wrong evidence to the *right* conclusion!"

Gendo scowled slightly more than normal, though of course this was hidden by his hands and the shadows and wasn't immediately noticeable.

OoOoO

Jared was rubbing his chin. "Though which one..."

Rei smiled slightly, very slightly, at him and said. "I am the clone."

OoOoO

Ritsuko's jaw hit the floor this time and her eyeballs rolled out as she fell back in a dead faint. Gendo reached for a button.

OoOoO

Jared was shaking his head. "No, it could just as easily be me. In fact, with the kind of series we're running here I shouldn't be surprised if Fuyutsuki was a robot and Gendo was a surgically altered monkey, with Misato as a magical girl fallen into despair with her powers inhibited by the weakness of alcohol addiction. Oh, and if they were going to introduce a lab rat with psychic powers, that would fit."

On the floor, Misato was quietly freaking out, picturing her "magic sidekick costume" as being some sort of sailor senshi outfit.

"But I am the clone." Rei blinked up at him.

He blinked back, surprised. "You sure?"

She nodded firmly. "Yes."

"Okay, but even if we accept that as true, then what does that make me? We have to go by cowboy and indians rules here. We've got our indian, so what's opposite that?"

Rei smiled again, very softly. "A normal boy." She hugged him.

He hugged back.

OoOoO

Gendo withdrew his finger from the button. ~I can't believe I was so foolish, letting his little game almost provoke me like that!~ He scowled again.

Ritsuko moaned, unconscious on the floor.

OoOoO

Misato popped back up from her own lasting face fault. "Okay, enough with the little games, here. We've got to do the synch test!" She caroled sweetly as she pushed the two youngsters along.

She also developed a facial tic. ~I think Jared's insanity is contagious! Who'd imagine Rei of all people going along with such a silly joke as that?~

OoOoO

Four women stood at the crest of a hill, overlooking the groundbreaking of some construction going on below.

OoOoO

Another Gratuitous Flashback

OoOoO

"On the surface it's just a fancy mall, done in a flashy style emulating a western fantasy castle. Indeed, the walls are armored to withstand boomer attacks and light artillery strikes, so it *is* a castle." Jared noted. "We just don't advertise that.

"Actually, the whole building is a self-contained shelter quality fortress with its own contained environment, power, and boomers. Low maintenance systems and automation not only make it very modern, but reduce the need for a human staff for the mall itself to practically zero, which makes it easy to keep secrets. The shops we rent space to employ their own staffs, but they're only there for the day. The rest of the time the mall is empty and closed and all ours.

"It's our training ground. We own several parts and operate them for our own use, the customers during the business day are just profit and cover. Our gym is a full physical training center with areas for personal development, martial arts training, weapons practice... It's our dojo, where we work on ourselves. Heck, we can do part of that during the regular day, just fit in with the customers at gymnastics or aerobics and save the martial training for after they leave.

"The arcade is actually alot more than it seems. It does brisk business during the day, and at night we convert some of the special machines over to simulator duty, just add to the quality of the programming in most cases. There we train in piloting vehicles of all types, engage in simulated firearm and heavy weapon practice, perform space combat drill, and so on. Not *much* different from what the machines regularly do as games, except our programs are designed to train for real world combat.

"The stadium is our biggest perk. Aren't many places where you can privately fly or train on real equipment in the outside world. Our armored walls ensure that nobody can overhear what goes on inside, so we can take the actual hardsuits out and get the real world training that points out the flaws in the simulator combat. Combine that with combat drills through the mall itself, the laser tag arena (REALLY amusing since we don't even change the programs, just use it as it was intended), add a track around the inside of the stadium for running, the private parklands for stealth and woodland drill... The only danger is becoming too familiar with our own private turf, instead of remaining able to adapt.

"Then there is a microchip plant and full autofactory that supply all the machine parts and electronics for our mall. Products are made under license from the owning manufacturer. That way we avoid lots of problems with people sneaking funky devices into our mall, and since the bigger corps don't want to license their product lines we get to showcase alot of the smaller businesses, who often have better stuff anyway. And, of course, I don't need to mention how useful it is having your own autofactory handy. Plus, I have our supercomputer chewing over designs and removing such flaws as kill commands, secret remote overrides, berserk modes and sundry fun things that life would be better off without.

"We do weekly training in the city sewers and subway tunnels to add variety and to practice in a wider environment, plus we do some underwater stuff. Then there are the trode centers for rapid skill training to fill up our weaknesses."

Jared shrugged happily. "In all we've got a perfect setup. All the space and tools we want along with the best kind of secrecy. Everything seems perfectly normal to any outside observer, or even a low-level infiltrator. Nobody's got any reason to dig further, and even if they did and *saw* us training... Well, unless we have the actual hardsuits out we're just a bunch of kids whose parents own a mall and are enjoying its facilities after hours."

Sylia breathed in awe. "Impressive."

He was happy with her response. "So, want to come over sometime?"

"Are you kidding?" Nene chirped. "It sounds like *alot* of fun!"

Linna leaned forward. "Hey, you hold concerts in the stadium sometime, right? Could we get Priss in there?"

"Sure, but don't *you* want a crack at it? I seem to remember a young kid who was very into singing."

Linna's eyes blinked wide. "That was *you!* You were the one that got me all that expensive vocal training and performance coaching?"

He winked. "Good friends always last. Frankly I think the judges that declined to give you a chance to go professional were deaf. You've got great talent."

Linna threw herself onto him, hugging Jared dearly.

Sylia smiled. "We'll be happy to accept your offer. Then we will only be too glad to return the favor when we get our own mall constructed."

Nene, Linna and Priss stared at their leader. "You mean we're going to be doing this ourselves?" Priss asked.

Sylia nodded. "As Jared pointed out, it's the perfect deep cover setup. Besides, the opportunity to hide so much publicly reduces the amount we have to store in secret, which in turn reduces the danger of discovery. The training opportunities would also be invaluable." Sylia favored Jared with an open look. "Would you and your team consent to train with us?"

He tossed up an eyebrow. "Sylia, I would love to, and I think my team would too."

OoOoO

End Flashback.

OoOoO

The four women shared smiles. They were joined by five more, who shared the silence with them for a time, then the five said their goodbyes and went to catch a plane.


	4. Chapter 4

Otaku Reflected  
Episode Three, Eva Revolution

Part Four  
A Superspy in Battle

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

Jared looked up as the sirens began to wail. He checked his watch. "Well, bang on time. This alien's on schedule at least. Let's hope it doesn't cut my arms off like the last one."

Rei looked up from among her circle of friends, and he had to grin, remembering their conversation a little while back.

OoOoO

Flashback

OoOoO

Jared walked up and stopped, looking at Rei.

"Rei, diagnostic procedures are proceeding. Observation indicates your dominant emotion to be loneliness. Lack of alternates and substitutes have led to lack of recognition of this condition by your own internal diagnostics. Suggest remedial steps be taken."

Rei turned to him an expression that had some humanity in it. "Explain?"

Jared turned his head to the side. "Loneliness: an encroaching emotion capable of displacing all others when its germination requirements are met. Universally despised as an inhibitor of all useful functions. Also described as a feeling of pain. Footnote: Pain of all sorts can be tuned out, yet still exist. Pains with extended duration can go unnoticed until they are relieved. Loneliness, removal of: Since loneliness is an emotion that arrives from a state of solitude, often involuntary, it is best remedied by the close presence of others. Note in this case that the mere proximity of others is not enough, closeness in an emotive sense is mandatory."

Rei merely blinked at him.

He answered the question. "Closeness, the measuring of bonds between people, be they positive or negative. The greater the strength the bonds, the greater the closeness exhibited. Note that closeness in a negative sense is always destructive and harmful, while that of a positive nature is constructive and rewarding. Recommended test case of positive bond samples: Affection, Concern for the well being of, Regard for, Curiosity concerning a person specifically, and Openness Toward. All are easily intermingled and thrive best when combined rather than separate."

He blinked once for her. "Special Note: All are precursors to Love."

She looked at him curiously. "Explain the expression on your face."

"A smile, external evidence of internal store of positive feeling." He continued to grin.

OoOoO

End Flashback

OoOoO

The girls of the class had been going all out to make Rei feel included since she got back, and they were gratified by how fast they'd been having results. Of course, a big part of that was Jared privately explaining to Rei what was going on, with some recommended courses of action, and replacing her medication without anyone knowing.

Still, it was good to see her face no longer as expressionless as it was.

Gendo, of course, was having kitten fits.

The siren once more grabbed their attention, and they both got up. Kensuke gloated from where he sat at a flight simulator. "Well, it looks like our two pilots are off, needed to go save the world again."

Jared grinned as they both dashed out. Kensuke had been on cloud nine ever since they'd given Misato the recommendation that he be allowed to pilot, and their classroom had been replaced nearly a week ago with training facilities that were to die for. The military otaku was just in heaven, while the other students were adapting. Their class rep was one of those having trouble adapting, but at least she was enjoying the gymnastics.

He helped Rei grab hold of the reverse fireman's pole that took them to the roof. It was a never-ending belt of footholds and handholds that rose at a steady rate, was a ton faster than elevators or stairs, it could even serve as a ladder in an emergency. It took them to the base of the school's new landing pad and Jared assisted Rei into the rear seat of their areodyne while he took the cockpit.

Sylia had given him a counter-rotational areodyne not unlike what the AD police had. Where a helicopter was basically a prop engine pointed upwards, an areodyne was a jet turbine done the same. That was the only real difference, though the physics made things possible that on an ordinary helicopter couldn't happen, for example the turbine was built into the fuselage where a prop engine had to hang above. For another, air maneuverability was above any conventional helicopter, and in this case, being counter-rotational made their operating noise virtually nil. Add in a little vectored thrust and it was a nimble little thing, not to mention stylish.

Jared got the fans turning and lifted off.

OoOoO

"Status of the dark warrior?"

Maya recited just where the invader was, its trajectory, and how little effect the UN forces were having, which was nil save to get slaughtered.

"Status of the pilots?" Gendo asked, not moving.

Maya just keyed open the right radio frequency as an answer.

Jared's voice came through. "Hello! This is Skywing One, we are lifting off from the school and headed your way. Please make Launch Tube Three ready for our arrival." The monitors were brought up to show their areodyne flying toward one of the Eva Launch rail buildings where the giant bio-mecha were delivered to do battle.

Gendo's glower darkened. "What is that thing, and what are they doing?"

Misato turned toward her subordinates. "Ready Launch Tube Three." Then back to face her commander. "They're using the new pilot delivery system put in place by the head of the Marduke institute, sir. I was told you were aware of it."

Gendo scowled, for *two* reasons, besides the habitual.

On the screen, Jared piloted the areodyne into the building that had just opened its side to them, then carefully buckled his craft into the cradle that Maya had launched there to greet them. Docking mechanisms sealed, and the birdcage that held their airship descended at a rate approaching that at which Evas were launched.

It accomplished in seconds what might have taken hours if vulnerable land lines were damaged; getting the pilots from class to their Knights, inside the geofront and preparing for battle.

"Impressive," Fuyutsuki noted.

"So you didn't know about this either?" Gendo asked him softly. A minuscule shake of the lackey's head, too minor to be noted by the command crew, was his reply.

"Is the Thunder Knight ready?" Came Jared's voice over the radio.

"Negative," came Dr. Ritsuko Akagi's reply. "We're going to use the Muscle Knight. There are too many unanswered questions about the other as yet."

"Understood, but may I respectfully protest? The Thunder Knight is the best robot we have, and Rei isn't suitable to send into combat with her injuries still not well."

"Our orders stand." Ritsuko told him. "But Rei is not going to be the pilot. Sky Lord, we need you to take Unit Zero into battle. Is this understood? You know it well enough by now with all of your practice."

OoOoO

Jared turned to look at Rei, both in their new pilot suits that were a little sleeker, more stylish, and not to mention more flattering, though bulky and heavy with internal electronics. He wore a loose jacket and knee boots over his to achieve that 'cool and dashing' effect.

"I don't mind." Rei told him. "You are the better pilot anyway."

He groaned aloud. "Oh, great. Now I know I'm going to get creamed. You only say things like that at life-critical moments of great climax when the fate of the world is about to be made or broken, to resolve long standing rivalries. Otherwise they herald the so-called great one getting humbled."

She cocked her head at him in conscious imitation of the gesture he used. "I'm sorry."

He nodded his thanks, and left the side of the ice-blue clad Rei, running off in his own costume of white with yellow and orange highlights that still somehow managed to avoid clashing with his hair.

The blue ribbon still tied around his arm flashed as he ran along.

OoOoO

Gendo, watching this now on the security monitors, frowned even more. "What are those things they're each wearing?"

Maya blinked from her control board without looking up. "The new standard issue plugsuit, sir." She went on fiddling with her controls.

Watching the boy race along to the Knight cage, Gendo's eyes grew hard, noting the colors and style of his costume. "Since when did we become a sentai series?"

Fuyutsuki braved a thin smile. "I think it was when we brought your son in to pilot an Eva. Or should I say Muscle Knight?" He asked with some irony.

Ritsuko spoke across folded arms. "I have to admit, his influence has been pushing us that way."

Gendo's currently ill-humor degenerated.

OoOoO

Jared ran into Eva Unit Zero's hangar, where Misato's voice came over the speakers and told him. "Jared, I want you to be serious about this fight. Alright? Obey my orders and don't do any unnecessary flashy stuff."

He paused, before addressing the speakers. "So you want me to go into a Serious Soldier mode, then?"

"Right!" Came back Misato's clarion call. "Just as serious as you can be. Remember to obey orders, now."

He thought for a second, then nodded. "Right. Gotcha." And with that he removed a micro cd player and pressed the play button, turning his back on the camera for a minute while the music built up. When he turned around, at the very first vocal note, he'd changed appearance almost totally, going from the carefree, good-hearted mecha pilot to something decidedly grim. Even his plugsuit had darkened, going from bright, cheery colors to a dark silver chrome, with bronze and copper accents.

With a sharp jerk, he tugged on a glove, his eyes hidden by dark glasses and his face something that would make Rei's formerly typical expression seem open and inviting.

OoOoO

"Mad Machine!  
How on the battle plains, a blue raging firestorm embraces me.  
Mad Machine!  
We will accept our pains, two screaming fists are my destiny!

Mad Machine!  
There's just no logic to, this fire that burns in my heart for you!  
Mad Machine!  
Whenever I'm with you, fights to the death are all too few!

Cold angry child, wounded and wild, seeking the blood of our rivals!  
Time's not a friend, nearing the end, each precious hour is vital!"

OoOoO

Misato's jaw dropped about three feet as the decidedly grim-faced youngster rode the lift to his waiting entry plug, hearing his battle music playing.

"It seems that you've triggered another episode, Misato. Let's hope this is a useful one, at least." Dr. Akagi taunted her perplexed friend.

Fuyutsuki, regarding the screen, remarked. "Didn't he once say that the professional soldier type doesn't survive combat?"

Captain Katsuragi looked stricken up at him, then sick back viewing the monitors. "Do you really think so?"

"Undoubtedly." Ritsuko observed, watching the monitors.

"Commit him into battle anyway." Gendo made the statement a command, trying to hide a grin unsuccessfully.

Ritsuko gave him a studied glance. "Are you sure about this? He'll spike his own performance, even unwittingly. Committing suicide, if you will, in order to make his prediction come true."

Gendo raised his face from his hands long enough to say. "Do it."

Misato and Ritsuko both gave him glances that were doubting and stricken.

OoOoO

Down in the Eva cage, during a stirring line, Jared got a tickle in his nose, was too cool to scratch it, and promptly sneezed hard enough to pluck him off of the rising platform and fall into the drink, making a big splash in the pool of fluid.

He began sinking due to the weight of the plugsuit.

OoOoO

"Call out a diver!" Ritsuko shouted at everyone in general. Then, when it became clear there wasn't one waiting, ran herself out of the room and rushed over to where her underwater breathing apparatus was left, casting her lab coat aside as she did so.

Misato's turn to look puzzled. "Why's she getting so upset? I mean, he breathes that stuff all the time in practice and running the Evas."

Maya had the answer to that one. "That's because the fluid inside of the cockpits is specifically oxygenated, while in the pool it's not. Even Doctor Akagi herself wears scuba gear inside the holding tanks."

"Oh." Misato said softly. "At least that music has stopped. She'll be able to rescue him, right?"

"It would be ignobious if our star pilot were to drown in a freak lift accident." Maya replied. "We'd never live it down."

Gendo scowled more than usual.

"Gendo?" His henchman asked, but received no answer.

The long haired technician, Shigeru Aoba, turned to ask of Maya. "So how did he get his suit to change color? That was a really neat effect."

Misato wearily shook her head. "I have the answer to that one. It was a camouflage device built in for their protection, to darken them for night operations. But it looks like a total flop. I'm going to have that circuit ripped out of there."

"Good." Gendo said. ~Reduce the cheap tricks and theatrics while you're at it.~

On the monitors, Ritsuko soon hauled out Jared's limp body and began to press softly on his back, emptying his lungs of fluid. She looked up at the camera and called for some help, a medical support team, and a respirator.

OoOoO

"You CAN'T send this boy out into combat now!" Ritsuko screamed at Gendo while the latter waited on his platform. She was standing beside a medical gurney and a boy currently breathing with machine support.

Gendo's face was flat, as usual. "Nevertheless, we will do it. Wake him up."

Doctor Ritsuko Akagi just folded her arms. "This child has just finished drowning. His *life* is in jeopardy, and you want me to put him back in the fluid that nearly killed him?"

Light glinted off glasses.

"You seem to have adequately summarized the situation, doctor Akagi." Behind him, Gendo heard Misato gasp in shock at his callousness. He ignored her.

With a scowl, Ritsuko turned and began to obey orders. Receiving the stimulant, Jared woke up, turned and vomited gouts of pink amber fluid over the side of the gurney, then smacked his lips and said. "Remind me never to obey orders again."

Ritsuko had no real response to that.

Misato came running up, cradling Jared in her arms. "Are you alright?"

He rubbed his nose. "I think that I'm allergic to being serious. I'm certainly not very good at it." ~Not to mention that it would involve obeying orders that would get us all killed. And on that note I think it's about time that I do something off the script and get this timeline changed.~

Jared leaped up out of bed. "I've GOT it! I finally know what series we're in! This is one of those where everyone's a bad guy and we're doomed to an utter destruction! That would explain, in your design logs, why you're *always* referring to this Eva stuff as the Oni project, and why your enemies are angels. Heck, you've probably had to sacrifice the souls of young women just to get these things running!"

Ritsuko's hair had spiked out.

Misato was making calming gestures. "Now, calm down..." ~Of course, his father is so careless of Jared's life... Maybe we *are* the bad guys. If commander Ikari can do this to his son what does that mean for the rest of us? Is anyone safe?~

The redhead turned on her. "No, to obey the workers of iniquity is to join darkness yourself. I can no longer obey your orders, for knowingly or not you serve evil." He swung back to face the Eva Unit Zero. "Muscle Knight! Take me aboard, for we can no more allow the destruction of this city than we can trust the leader of this hive of thieves!"

"Now wait just a darn minute, there..." Ritsuko was interrupted by the giant hand of Unit Zero tearing free of the cage restraints and lifting Jared bodily into the air. As the doctor sprawled she looked up, mad with fear. "No way! This can't be happening! It *can't* move without an entry plug inserted! It doesn't even have power!"

Jared stared down at her disparagingly. "You don't know the first thing about these, do you?" He hopped from the palm into the seat of the entry plug. "Muscle Knight, block out all external commands, prepare for launch, and give Gendo the finger, would you?"

The massive arm tore free of the cage more fully and jammed a very rude finger gesture against the glass behind which Gendo waited. The man didn't even turn to face his companion. "Controlling this pilot has become even more difficult, it seems."

Fuyutsuki nodded. "We appear to be pushing the wrong buttons."

Gendo tilted his head to convey the maximum amount of contempt. "We cannot rely on him any longer. Begin searching for a replacement pilot."

The villain's henchman nodded.

OoOoO

The secret, of course, to controlling Rei's Eva was to dislike Gendo, an act which came so naturally that his synch rate was quite far up there, enough for the maddened soul of Ritsuko's mother to obey him almost as smoothly as his own.

It also explained why Rei never got that much performance out of it.

Still without plugging into a power cable, the Muscle Knight stared upwards, and began to fly toward the surface, launch rail doors withdrawing as Maya frantically granted them passage. On the surface he finally grabbed a power cable and inserted it, then keyed open communications.

"Ritsuko, get me the status of the target. Misato, get the Thunder Knight's sword and shield up here."

Misato sweatdropped, looking back over her shoulder at Gendo's observation post that looked almost like the command center's throne. "Err, well... Uh, commander Ikari didn't like the idea of preparing such medieval armaments, so we don't have them to give you. I'll be sending you a rifle."

A *very* long sigh came from the pilot. Jared mumbled something too low to hear, though the phrase "no class at all" came through quite clearly.

Ritsuko filled in the gap. "The fourth dark angel is nearing your position. Get ready."

"Waaait a minute! Fourth? I only defeated one. What happened to the other two?"

Gendo's voice came unexpectedly over the speakers. "Second Impact was caused by an angel, you need not be concerned about the other."

"Uh huh." Came a disbelieving reply. "Knowing you, you probably have it locked in a basement somewhere, while you and a hunchbacked manservant try and use pieces of it to create life. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if you had plans to go to bed with it. That would make it one of the few life forms on Earth that you hadn't slept with... yet, mister Ikari. Mother knew you were unfaithful to her, you know."

"I am not hunchbacked!" Ritsuko yelled back, then promptly sat down and hid her face in her hands, unable to believe she'd risen to the bait like that. ~Where did this pilot learn such things? It was unbelievable!~

Gendo snarled, while the rest of the staff stared dumbfounded, for differing reasons.

"Uh, sending a rifle." Misato tried to break this tension somewhat.

Another weary sigh and muttered comment about "not only lacking any class, but rifles just don't have any *style* to them..."

The pilot's voice returned. "Oh, and Mr. Gendo Ikari, do you have any explanation *why* it is that you managed to return from the antarctic expedition that *caused* Second Impact by playing with that alien, just exactly ONE day before it happened, coincidentally just happening to return with all of their research material packed in your luggage?"

Casual business was forgotten as the command staff turned to STARE at Gendo. This being something that many of them had wondered themselves.

"Or why," the pilot's voice returned. "After you'd killed your wife, you had such a change of heart and actually missed her? So you plan to be reunited by transforming the Earth into cosmic sludge, exterminating every man, woman and child for your own attempt to rejoin the wife you were never faithful to in life?"

Gendo's gaze was steely hard, as even Fuyutsuki had retreated from him a pace. "And just *where* do you claim to get this information?" Commander Ikari snarled.

The redhaired pilot came on screen, looking totally and innocently shocked. He held up a book. "Why, from your autobiography, of course! Where *else* do you think I would have learned it? The scriptures?" He paused and flipped through pages. "No, I saw this in the bookstore and just had to pick it up. Here's a good quote on page ninety-three: Even though she knows that I have lied to every other person on this planet, including Rei, doctor Akagi still believes that she is the one being I am truthful to, this in spite of the fact that the last two women to hold that opinion are both dead - by my hand, I might add. I even slept with both of the others, too, just like Ritsuko. She may even have seen me kill her mother, I don't know." The pilot closed the book and shrugged. "The book's chock full o' stuff like that. If you didn't want people to know, why did you PUBLISH it?"

Gendo ordered the link to be closed, but everyone was too stunned to comply.

Doctor Akagi was having a minor heart attack as facts were hitting home. "Genchan..? But, but, none of the others called you 'pookie-bear', did they?"

Various bridge crewmen got ill at the imagery suddenly summoned to their minds. Hyuga very calmly reached over to Aoba's copy of the Ritsuko Swimsuit Calender and penciled 'pookie bear' in a word balloon over her face, then broke up and fell out of his seat laughing.

Maya was three shades redder than Jared's hair at the information.

Misato, in her stunned daze, trying to ignore how her mind reeled from the revelation that her best friend was having sex with the commander, noted that Rei had entered the command center in time to hear that earlier quote. The young girl was looking with unfriendly eyes toward Ikari.

NOT that she was alone, by any means.

Aoba carefully looked around, breaking the silence by opening a drawer. From it, he removed a book entitled 'Advanced Backstabbing, and how to betray...' The technician had a helpless gesture as he displayed the volume. "I though it was a joke book. I was going to read it on my way home."

Misato's voice was very dry as she asked. "Where did you get that?"

Aoba could only shrug, turning some pages. "At the bookstore, they had a pile of them. They were all up front in this big promotional display. I thought for sure that it had to be a gag." ~Of course, I also wanted to check out the pictorial section. Hey! How about this! He's never had an affair with Maya, Rei *or* Misato! They're still unblemished!~

"That was no joke." Ritsuko whispered.

"Pookie bear?" Misato repeated, still in shock.

Maya mouthed the phrase herself, looking terribly nauseated.

Jared shrugged on their screen. "Yah, it was right next to a smaller pile of How To Destroy All Life In Three Easy Impacts by some guy called Keele. In fact I think that you mention him here in *you're* book. Yah, here it is under People I Most Hate: Keele Lorenz, also suspected to be the Wandering Jew, head of a vast secret government in control of the UN and most industries, this man was instrumental in my own rise to power, offering in return a controlled Third Impact on his own terms. Betraying him was a tricky exercise, but well worth rising to the challenge. First I got control of the predecessor organization to Nerv, then created a half angel clone of my dead wife..."

As the command crew got paler and paler, two things were noticed. Rei lunged for the upper command desk, only to be beaten to the punch by Fuyutsuki, who was bodily slammed aside by a desperate Ikari, who then activated the lift function of the throne to sink out of sight.

The second thing to happen was the dark warrior coming in to town. Jared turned his Knight to face it. A completely unexplained gust of smoke drifted across the intervening space between them.

Harmonica music played a western gunfight tune.

The redhaired superspy in the Muscle Knight noted several differences in the dark angel from what it had appeared in the series. Where in the show it had appeared leathery with just a hint of slime, like a sea creature, it now appeared rubbery.

Insulation, he realized. It was adapting, or rather it came armed to defeat the last way he'd used to defeat them. These things were smart after all, and he could throw much of his precious series-obtained knowledge about his opposition to the breeze. It wasn't true any more. These things would be adapting to defeat *him*, not Shinji.

The creature deployed its laser arms... err, forget that. Its main weapon had changed too. It was still waving about two flexible tentacles, but the ribbons left behind them trails of frost and snowflakes in midair. They probably had a chilling attack.

Well, he had a way he could fight that, too.

Jared cracked his knuckles, then forgot that he couldn't do that anymore and searched real quick for another method just as good for preparing for combat.

Ah! The perfect thing!

He shook his head as the insectoid creature with the frost arms approached. "Listen closely, Rei. For piloting a Muscle or an Elemental Knight depends strictly on your own will and emotional control, acting in accordance with its own. Observe!"

He arced his back and cried out. "Elemental Power! Charging Up!"

This time there *was* a huge, elaborate transformation scene, mostly an effect of a visible AT field, but hey, you take what you can get. The Muscle Knight rose abruptly, with spread arms, and twisted in midair while surrounded by flashy motes. Electrical blasts went around it, forming a globe, then turned to a pivoting sphere of frosty lace. Frost covered the entire Evangelion, which then flexed and destroyed the soft coating, leaving it painted an ice blue like Rei's new plugsuit.

A gem with a tiny snowflake on it appeared on the unit's breast.

Rei watched this with every display of interest. Fuyutsuki had run off after Ikari and Misato was calling for Nerv security to apprehend Gendo. Ritsuko came to herself enough to question. "Just what *is* it this guy knows about Evas that we don't?"

"I'll tell you what." Aoba quipped. "I really AM starting to feel like this guy's the star of an anime series involving the rest of us."

Hyuga, the technician with glasses, regained his seat and straightened his eyewear, having just finished laughing. "Well, he does act like the main character, doesn't he? I notice events kind of revolve around him."

Maya's head fell into her hands. "Oh no, this means one of us will get kidnapped by the villains in an upcoming episode!"

Aoba blinked at her. "Why?"

Maya only groaned. "Because it's *in genre*!"

OoOoO

Out on the battlefield, Jared had the Eva pose to his satisfaction while the dark alien reared. He had the Unit stretch forth its left hand and flex it. "Behold, hellspawn! For I face you in the wondrous Frost Knight! And if that evil madman won't provide decent weapons for me, I'll make my own. Frost Shield, Appear!"

Within his stretched forth hand, bands of blue came together into a blue kite shield made of ice, which stopped the enemy's first blow, and the flurry of snowflakes that came with the attack not harming the shield at all.

OoOoO

"How is he *doing* that?" Ritsuko yelled out, stressed well beyond her capacity.

Maya blinked several times at the command readouts, bringing herself back to the priorities of battle. "It appears to be a modulation of the AT field, condensing water vapor out of the air into a desired form, and strengthening it considerably."

The other two techs merely shook their heads in wonder.

"Heroic methods?" Aoba offered, to Hyuga's agreeing nod.

Rei watched Misato run off to help apprehend Gendo, and stepped up into her station, keying a comm line open. "Sky Lord, Frost Knight is ready for battle. Destroy the dark warrior."

"Uh, well, I'd kind of like to do that. There's only one problem." Jared's voice came back.

Rei paused for a long instant. "Explain the nature of your difficulty."

The scene switched back to Jared, as he was struggling to get the Eva to move from its defensive posture. A quick glance revealed a cable hissing and sputtering around the Frost Knight's ankle.

"The unfair villain cut my power cord during the transformation sequence! I exhausted the Knight itself with the change and, oops..."

The Frost Knight went dead. The dark angel wrapped its chill arms around its neck.

Rei turned calmly to Aoba. "Activate the Emergency Eject. Contact Eva Rescue."

Aoba tried the controls, then shook his head. "I can't. He's locked out all external commands."

"Eva Rescue has been notified." Hyuga put in efficiently, straightening his glasses.

Misato came running back in, having found no trace of their commander, to see the one-sided battle going on on their screens and hear the last comment. She rounded on the plugsuited Rei. "You've GOT to go out and save him! Take Thunder Knight." She whipped about to order the techs. "Release it from cryostasis!"

Maya quickly hit sequences in her controls, but Rei was frowning sadly to Captain Katsuragi. "I am unable take the Thunder Knight into battle."

"Look, I know that you're injured, but Jared's *life* is in danger!" Misato tried to help reassure the girl.

Rei once again shook her head calmly. "I cannot. I have not yet received permission from Sky Lord to command his Knight. It does not know that it can trust me. Nor can such permission be given except by him in its presence."

"That's hogwash, just get in and pilot." Ritsuko sobbed from where she was curled up crying in a ball, sitting on the floor with her back to a wall.

The First Child directed her gaze that way. "It should be obvious Jared's knowledge of the inner workings of Knights exceeds your own. I will trust his judgment. I believe this scenario was planned by Jared's enemies, putting him in battle in our least effective Knight, with no possibility of another coming to his aid - as our only Knight left, he is the only able pilot for, leaving no reinforcement in this circumstance."

"That makes a scary sort of sense." Hyuga muttered, watching his boards.

"I can't believe you are all accepting his version of reality." Ritsuko muttered from with her fetal position.

Rei again directed her look that way. "It is the only one to have borne up under trial. Yours was noticeably fragile. Ikari's was lies. Jared's has withstood the test of operation, in spite of how little you esteem it."

Misato tried *not* to look at her friend. "Sanity is determined by the majority, after all. And what better for the majority to believe in than the stuff that obviously works?"

Hyuga mutter softly to his boards, but one comment came though quite well. "Well, for one thing that would make you his sidekick, Misato."

There came a flash from the monitors as the back of unit zero opened up and the entry plug ejected, firing off jets that hurtled it a far distance away, the dark angel pausing in strangling its foe to watch the trajectory.

"Status of the pilot!" Misato yelled, suddenly business all over again.

"He's landed practically at the feet of entry gate number eleven!" Maya reported. "It seems he was able to trigger the auto eject manually!"

"Eva Rescue?"

"On their way!"

Aoba turned from his boards. "The dark warrior is abandoning the Frost Knight and is pursuing the capsule!"

"Activate all city defenses!" Misato shouted. "Slow it down!"

"Captain Katsuragi," Rei suggested. "I think that we should launch Thunder Knight to lift eleven. Sky Lord will be able to have it install the entry plug manually, then continue the fight."

"Impossible!" Ritsuko stood up. "An Eva *cannot* perform those type of functions! It has to have an interface!"

Rei cocked her head. "He controlled my Frost Knight externally."

Misato thought about it for a brief instant. "Launch Thunder Knight!"

OoOoO

On the surface forests of missiles, dozens launched every second, came down as a mighty hail on the hellspawn. Maneuvering battle platforms, cannon, and all manner of built up hidden artillery systems spoke from every recess and crevice, thundering down shells and explosives on the invader.

None of it slowed the enemy down at all.

Jared had opened his entry capsule and staggered to safety, still weak from recently drowning and weighed down by who-knows what gear they'd stuffed in his overdesigned plugsuit. The sneeze had been his choice, drowning had not been considered. It had come unexpectedly, but trying to swim in this thing had proved impossible.

The angel lashed out with a frosty tentacle and snagged up the empty entry plug, crushing it in its grasp. The pod shattered, each piece rimmed with ice.

~Let's see, closest cover is that way. I'm already well within its weapon range. The alien's speed outpaces mine by an order of magnitude, and when it comes down to it all that cover can do is get destroyed along with me.~

Jared hardened, reciting lines he'd generated under life-threatening circumstances so long before he'd even began all this dimensional business, back in what he was beginning to call Real Life. ~Whether I live, or die, it is the same. But I've a mission to complete.~(1)

He began to run.

The enemy menace sent two freezing tentacles sizzling at him, whipping through the air. There came a flash before the slash, then the rubble exploded.

Jared found himself cradled in the arms of Priss' hardsuit, bounding over nearby roof tops. He hugged her as she ran. "..." Obviously, he could not read their scrambled communications with his toys safely tucked inside his pouch, nor could he see her features. But he imagined her smiling and promising in some amused way to collect on this debt at a later date.

He didn't mind that much.

Priss deposited him near the foot of an Eva cage, while the alien was busy dealing with a large amount of napalm that had suddenly been delivered to it, no doubt having something to do with Sylia's ingenuity.

The launch cage slammed open and revealed his Thunder Knight. The back opened up and Priss began leaping up to deliver him there. Standing on the Eva's shoulder next to the pit ready for an entry plug, Jared delivered to her helmet a quick kiss.

She'd earned it, and he might not live to give her another.

Jared began climbing down into the black maw where an entry plug ought to go.

OoOoO

"What's he doing!" Misato screamed. "Withdraw the Thunder Knight. We should never have sent it out once the entry capsule was destroyed."

"It was already en route." The tech with glasses reminded, without *perfect* accuracy but close enough. The emotional sequence of the launch had begun before the last button had been pressed.

Maya blinked in wonderment at her controls. "Thunder Knight is coming online. Synch ratio is rising, climbing past 50%."

"Get me a readout of those other participants in the battle!" Misato demanded.

Aoba shook his head. "They've disappeared again! One blast with a tanker truck full of napalm and they were gone!"

Hyuga loyally stood by his controls. "Withdrawing Thunder Knight." The screen showed the Eva unit getting withdrawn and pulled back into the geofront, following the launch rails.

"I'll get an entry plug ready for him." Rei volunteered.

A very quick scramble, involving some troops to get various things straightened out, and Jared was seating within an entry plug that was inserted into the Thunder Knight as it was preparing for a second takeoff.

"Are you ready, Jared?" Misato asked him across the communications monitors.

He took a deep breath, and replied. "These things adapt to our last efforts. They've been set up to defeat this unit. We've got to adapt swiftly too or next time they'll beat us."

"Aren't you worried about this time?" Rei asked him.

He closed his eyes, contemplating. "I think I can do it. There are still some tricks up my sleeve. If nothing else, I'm the hero. I've got sheer guts to rely on."

Rei nodded as if absorbing that for future reference.

Misato was getting shook up. "Thunder Knight, Launch!"

Ritsuko raised a tear streaked and world-weary head, blasted and disinterested in all she'd cared about at this point. She had enough left in her to wonder. "How's he doing?"

The command crew watched, horrified, as Jared's Knight reached the surface only to be instantly and cleanly beheaded by a mouth beam from the dark angel.

"Not good." Maya gave the empty reply.

"Grrr!" Came the pilot's reply to the enemy. "The only reason God created demons was for virtuous heroes to run around defeating them!"

"Then again?" Misato's hair had toinged.

OoOoO

(1) This quote comes from a Real Life experience that truly happened to me, and I did not know whether I would live or die from one moment to the next, the circumstances were that dangerous. But I did what I had to do, and I am alive.

So I know what I am like under fire. 


	5. Chapter 5

Otaku Reflected  
Episode Three, Eva Revolution

Part Five  
A Superspy in Repose

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

Thunder Knight wobbled on its feet for a moment while Jared arrived at a decision. It then stabilized and regrew its head, one matching the white armor of its legs and arms. The Thunder Knight suddenly flexed and the bands of purple armor around its chest scattered as if exploding, revealing the Knight in a subtly different style of snow white armor that was briefly accented along the joints by every color in the rainbow.

The dark angel tried the mouth beam again, only to have Thunder Knight dodge it and come down with a kick that sent the much larger creature sprawling. Jared leapt to the side as the whips went shooting past him. Something about this Dark Angel reminded him a bit of Kodachi. Hmm. Oh well, time to get fancy.

"Dark Warrior, you have committed a grievous mistake in facing me! Know that I am the Thunder Knight! And I call upon Heaven's Wrath to smite you!"

Inside NERV, Misato was trying frantically to raise him on the radio. Maya merely raised an eyebrow and noted that Jared seemed well on the road to a complete recovery. Aoba noted that he didn't seem to have minded getting beheaded at all, which brought Ritsuko's attention away from her own suffering somewhat in curiosity.

The Thunder Knight's hands were held out in front of it, and lightning flared from one of the large gems on his chest to form a cat's cradle between his fingers. Jared moved his hands, picturing the proper shape, and the Eva/Thunder Knight moved itself accordingly. A spear, as tall as the Thunder Knight itself, formed with an appropriate peal of thunder.

Ritsuko's jaw dropped as she came off the floor and watched the scene on the monitor. "He *can't* do that! It's impossible!"

Misato blinked, her face stuck in wonderment. "He just did. I need a drink."

"Careful, Captain, there are a lot of sidekicks with drinking problems to the main hero." Maya noted, happily seeing that Ritsuko was coming at least partway out of her funk.

Misato flinched.

"Hmmmm," hmmed most of the bridge crew, including Gendo through his secret monitors as he made his escape, everyone eying Misato briefly.

In the meantime, the Thunder Knight had whipped the spear through a few martial arts spear katas and done the required poses. Now he decided it was time for a Special Attack. Why? Because an anime hero has to do what an anime hero has to do! "Pssst. Misato!"

"What?" Misato was a little stressed out. How would "comic relief sidekick" look on her resume? How embarrassing. Would this be considered a demotion?

"This is the part where you're supposed to say something encouraging," Thunder Knight blocked, parried, dodged, and ducked various attacks while Jared talked, "and get me to use my Special Never Before Seen But Stock Footage Super Special Attack."

"JUST GET ON WITH IT AND BEAT THE DARK ANGEL!"

Ritsuko smirked at how frazzled Misato looked, regaining some measure of her own composure in her friend's discomfort. "Thunder Knight, I think it's time to use your Special Attack. So go ahead and spear the 'Dark Angel'."

Jared spun the spear around overhead at faster and faster speeds. Clouds grew overhead and began to darken and swirl.

"HEAVEN'S..."

Maya stared. "He's using the AT field as a condenser. Reading a buildup of an electrical charge from the S2 Unit."

Misato stared. "Static electricity? But..."

"...JUSTICE..."

Gendo smirked behind steepled hands as his transport raced to a secret sanctuary. No, this wasn't in the Dead Sea scrolls, or in Revelations, but it WAS giving his scientists all sorts of odd data from their sensor readings which he would later acquire through the MAGI. Besides, certain members of SEELE were probably going into a panic right about now. Keele might want to die, but he wasn't anxious to have it hurt a lot. Anything with Divine or Heavenly with Justice in the title would tweak the old man's shorts.

"...STORM!"

Jared slammed the spear down into the Dark Angel's AT field as lightning flared out from across Tokyo 3, all of which seemed to converge on the point of impact in the moment of the strike. The Angel twitched and fell over as the spear penetrated and went directly through the gemlike protuberance.

"Okay, Jared. Good job..." Misato tried to ignore the comments about as she was Jared's mascot shouldn't she have a proper costume of some sort? The staff were just blowing off steam, weren't they?

"Just a second, I still have to do my Victory Pose..."

The Dark Angel came up off the ground and wrapped both of its frosty ribbon arms around Thunder Knight's neck, causing frost and chill to spread along the armor there. A quick glance realized that the angel's core was deeply scarred, but had somehow slipped to the side and the lightning spear had penetrate only the thing's body.

"Stupid villain, you're supposed to stay dead!" Jared shouted out the only attack phrase which came immediately to mind.

"DIVINE RETRIBUTION!"

OoOoO

Jared rubbed his eyes and sat up, knowing as he did so that that was the last stop. He'd pulled the very last trick he'd had available in that fight, it had been sufficient, but next time the invaders would be prepared for it.

He might as well start calling them demons, that was what a fallen angel was.

It suddenly occurred to him that he had a greater resource than ever existed before in an Eva universe. He had the Knight Sabers, and the Laser Angels, people he could, did and *had* trusted with his life and more. Trust and loyalty were almost non-existent things in a standard Eva timeline, and if they were there they were undeserved - like trust given to Gendo, for instance, was always withdrawn just a little too late to do the poor, lamented soul who gave it any good.

Except in this case.

Except in this case...

Trust was a resource unequaled, and for the first time in this unholy series it *wasn't* being given to the wrong cause. He could use that. There were things which could be done.

Jared looked over at the other hospital bed, containing Yui.

In order to pilot his Eva and regenerate its head, he'd had to go through the whole 400% synchronization, turn-myself-to-goo, mode. It really had been that desperate, and while he was doing it he felt he might as well do what was necessary to have Yui's trapped soul released with him. Though there had only been one body's worth of briny fluid the Eva itself was almost totally human in its makeup, and it hadn't been a very big deal to have it produce the necessary surplus to generate the extra human form.

Now a further kink in Gendo's plans. Would he dare destroy the world with Yui alive in it? Never mind if he did, or if others were willing, any departure from the regular plot was a score in his book.

All they'd have to do now was keep a guard on her and wait for Gendo to show up.

OoOoO

Ritsuko stared at the fluid filled cryo chamber where the pieces torn from Unit One were held, feeling a strange sort of peace. It was like she was defusing a bomb that'd been set by her mother, instead of adding adjustments to the timing mechanism like she'd spent most of her adult life doing.

Gendo had been wrong, SEELE was wrong. But it looked as if they might actually live through this, and Ritsuko was discovering that she liked the idea.

Misato stood by her side apprehensively as the crews worked. "Are we sure about this?" She asked, having to deal with alot in the past three days and not feeling any better from some of the things she'd learned - many of which Ritsuko had shown her. Discovering Fuyutsuki bleeding on the floor from a gunshot wound from when he'd been chasing the commander hadn't helped anyone's peace of mind. Gendo was still out there somewhere.

Ritsuko nodded, aware of the nature of her friend's private thoughts. "There's no way the men who control the UN would grant us the additional funding to build another Knight, especially not with their man no longer in control here, and from Jared's last fight it is obvious we'll need the extra firepower."

Misato was still nervous about what her friend had said about secret organizations. It didn't help her peace of mind any to know how much her father had been involved in them, either. "Still, won't they give us the funding when we get a new controller?"

Ritsuko shook her head, amazed by her friend's innocence. "Anyone they send to us would be just as bad as Gendo. They'll have their own private agendas and all sorts of secret plots. We've got to get as much accomplished as we can before that happens, so we can have the resources on hand to do our jobs right."

Misato put her behind on the railing and sat on it, looking at her friend. "Still, after that last fight, Thunder Knight's got a new crystal, and the rest of the Dark Angel was fed to our remaining Muscle Knight. Surely that ought to help."

"Some, surely," Ritsuko agreed. "But Rei hasn't the same pilot ability as Jared has demonstrated, nor has the newly dubbed Frost Knight absorbed the S2 organs fully. It will be a close match between the two of them and the next Dark Angel if it comes as prepared as Jared warns us it might be. We've got Rei practicing, but I doubt it will be enough. She simply doesn't believe to the same extent he does."

Misato looked out over the chamber, recalling pale blue, snowflake marked crystals that now adorned both of their Knights' chest armor. "So now this." She sighed.

Ritsuko hadn't taken her eyes off of the assembly this whole time. The severed bits of Unit One had been suspended in their proper order, leaving a complete Eva unit without a chest. She'd gone down personally into the bowels of the Geofront, selecting from their failed Eva prototypes enough parts to make this work. It was surprising how few of them they'd needed. The basic framework of an Eva was its flesh grown over a chassis of artificial skull, spine, shoulders and arms. Half of that framework had been available to them here in these severed parts, the rest being assembled now, hooked in as it was being constructed down below them. It was only a matter of hours before the technical crew had completed their work and they could begin growing the Eva's flesh across the newly installed spine and shoulders. Then they would add armor spares from stock supplies they kept that Unit One could no longer use.

By the end of the week they'd have another Muscle Knight.

"How are the new weapons coming?" Ritsuko broke their thought filled silence.

Misato shrugged. "Getting swords that big isn't easy. We're having some progress with the shields, melting and reforming spare armor plates that Unit One can't use anymore. We were thinking of facing them with a layer of refractive ceramics, but we're not sure..."

"I'd go ahead and do it." Doctor Akagi spared a speculative and more open glance to her friend. "The ceramics wouldn't stop physical blows. But they're great insulation against fire, cold, or similar energy attacks, which we seem to be facing a lot of in these battles."

Misato nodded. "And we'd have the armor base behind them to deal with crushing attacks. I'll go ahead and give the order. I'd scrap the D type equipment in order to get a supply of temperature resistant metal, but..."

"But who knows when we might need it." Her old friend finished for her.

Misato grew silent for a while, then asked. "Who are we going to get to pilot it?"

Ritsuko saw her friend examining the new Eva, and pursed her lips in a slight smile. "Well, Yui developed them. I was thinking of asking her opinion." Her eyes twinkled. "In part because it's something my mother would never do."

Misato just nodded.

Ritsuko was like a fallen woman who had seen redemption possible for the first time: Scarred and bruised, but determined not to miss this chance.

OoOoO

The floating monoliths continued to look down over the table as the defacto rulers of the world met once again in their secret, holographic conference. The fact that they WERE the rulers of the world would have surprised anyone who hadn't traced back all of the strings and puppets they used to hide their real power. But of course, anyone who got that curious had an interesting tendency to wind up dead, or discredited, or both.

"We'll have to replace Ikari," said Keele in his customary growl.

"We could put Fuyutsuki in charge," Number Four suggested.

"Unlikely to go along with the fullness of our plan." Keele grumbled. "We need someone with fewer morals, and who has an agenda we can work with."

"I believe that I have just the candidate," said Number Six. A holographic statuette appeared over the surface of the table. "He is sufficiently amoral, but also a posturing clown prone to elaborate schemes that fail to pan out. Old, but not dead yet. And sufficiently greedy and hungry for a vision that he can be... persuaded."

"He... might do." Keele allowed. "Bring certain facts about his 'special' concerns to his attention and he would do most anything to obtain proximity to the pilot of Unit One. Bring in Mr. Kaji to help monitor him, and keep him in the dark about the full result of our plans. This man would sell out nearly anyone. What of the monitor and control on the Pilot of Unit 01?"

The monolith marked '08' replied with a sycophantish murmur. "We had Mr. Kaji do our research into this genre for us, and had his opinion borne out by experts. They concur that the anime superhero Rokubungi's son fancies himself to be could be manipulated quite easily if we were to employ a love triangle - two or more women fighting over him, though we would obviously want to control the women involved."

Number Seven assimilated this and spoke a conclusion. "The absolute minimum is one brash and overbearing, the other gentle and sweet."

Keele would not even permit himself to grin at number seven's slip, admitting that he watched anime. Staring coldly straight ahead, Keele ordered. "Asuka Langley Soryu will be suitable for the first role. See that she is placed in a way that will be compromising, then let their relationship deteriorate."

Number Two replied. "That would bat him quite effectively into the embrace of our second love interest, whomever we chose for that to be."

Number Three spoke this time, his voice garbled slightly. "The Control is being built. We have found robotics and cybernetics experts sufficient to do the deed. The parameters have been downloaded."

Number Five smiled, though that couldn't be seen, only heard through the monolith. "We have the knowledge, we have the technology..."

"Enough, Number Five. We have no need to join this pilot in his delusional fantasies, and you've got the quote wrong anyway." Keele remembered the series. He hadn't been impressed with it then, either.

"The plan to exchange Rei and Unit Zero to Germany with Asuka and HER unit will tie in nicely. We should be able to introduce the Control to Asuka and further confuse things with the new Commander coming on board."

OoOoO

In Switzerland, Number Four stepped back from his terminal. He didn't notice the monofilament slip around his neck briefly, then go taut.

"Ick." Meg stepped back and flicked blood off her fingers, letting the wire garrote slip soundlessly back into its container, a brief spurt of red blood as the tool cleaned itself on the way in. She took out a lacy handkerchief and began to clean her hands as the banker's head lolled sickening to the side in a way that wasn't possible had the organ been fully connected to its base. "We have *got* to find a way to do things less messily."

Lou nodded from her place in the doorjamb. "True, but try as I might I couldn't find a way to get the heavy weapons past his security scanners. Too high an energy signature. It would have warned him."

"You got the cameras and sound bugs okay."

"They weren't a big deal. He didn't want his own comings and goings known, so the security web wasn't as solid. But he didn't skimp on the weapon detectors."

"Nene could have done it." Meg slipped the hankie into a plastic baggie before returning it to her pocket. No need to get her clothes messy.

Lou frowned at the reminder, then shrugged. "Maybe... no, make that probably. She's a whiz, I won't deny it. But our team does alright, Nam especially." She loaded the contents of a computer disk into the master control circuitry that lay exposed in this nerve center, then retrieved her disk and pocketed it.

Meg fished a small charge out of her clothes and dropped it after flicking its switch. The small capsule landed on the body and began to emit acrid smoke, which both ladies stayed well clear from on their way out of the room. As the door sealed behind them the body, the chair, and organics all the way from the wood of the furnishings to the blood and the carpet all began to dissolve. In less than five hours the gas would mature and transform into a cloud bomb, destroying all the rest of the equipment and computer nodes.

It was crude, but with luck only the men they were hunting would have an idea that this place deep below the world's largest banking center even existed. It would limit their ability to employ resources to look into this when the matter got this close to their own plots. Their own intense secrecy would limit their ability to look into it properly for fear of their plans being made known, even to trusted servants.

They only trusted their servants so much, and this went beyond that. There was still a risk. If the Laser Angels panicked their targets early there'd be no telling *what* they'd do. Probably the old men would react with everything they had in an attempt to hunt the girls into extinction before they could finish them off.

But Jared needed them to kill the members of SEELE, and that was what they'd do. The girls guarded each other's backs as they left, slipping past bank guards using their eyes hypnotic effects to cause the guards to forget they'd even passed. Ten minutes after they were out a virus program designed by Nam released control of the security computers, having ensured they recorded nothing, then promptly erased all traces of itself, concluding a series of measures that only an expert would be even able to tell as a security gap. The larger program they'd downloaded into the central command computers directly now began to go slowly and deliberately about its work.

Lou shook out her hair. "Hmm, now that's done, what's say we get us some Swiss Chocolate before we hook up with Sylvie and Nam? Then we can see if Anri managed to trace the next set of connections."

"Ick." Meg made a face. "I don't feel like eating. And, if we can't find a cleaner way then *you're* doing the next one. We'll take turns."

"Me?" Lou held a hand innocently to her chest. Seeing Meg nod seriously, all Lou could reply was to make a face and groan.

"Ick."

OoOoO

"Sylia!" Nene cam bounding in, wearing her trademark pink pajamas with little ruffles at each sleeve and hem.

Linna looked up just long enough to put another cup on the table and continued to pour hot cocoa for everyone. Across the table from her Priss yawned loudly while Sylia turned from the eggs she was preparing. Sylia still wore her nightgown while Linna was still in sweats and Priss in the halter and shorts she normally slept in. Somehow they never had gotten down the skill of bathing and changing to regular clothes before breakfast.

"Yes, what is it, Nene?"

The redhaired computer hacker bounced into her seat and bit into a piece of toast. "It is about our new mainframe. I spent almost all of last week getting it installed and I was just about to start downloading files into it this morning." The toast went down and was followed by orange juice. Sylia brought a plate of eggs to the table and Priss dug in, listening while Linna brought more plates and Nene went on talking. The redhead cleared her mouth and swallowed. "Only I just logged on to see someone had hacked through our security system and left a ton of files."

"They *left* files?" Linna emphasized, sitting down with the rest to their breakfast. "I thought hackers normally broke through and stole them, not left things behind."

"Well, viruses maybe." Nene admitted. "But I already checked and this wasn't that. It was all left there for us to find, like somebody sending messages to us or something."

"How did they get in, Nene?" Sylia asked, while watching Priss put away the food as fast as their beloved computer hacker.

Nene devoured an egg before responding with flecks of food at the side of her lips. "Hardwired access codes, built into the machinery. I guess I'll have to burn it out. Oh darn. That'll take all afternoon!"

"If they had hardwired codes they had access to the company that makes the CPU. If we want security, we'll have to build our own mainframes from scratch. That means time. We might as well leave them this mainframe with dummy files for our mysterious intruders to amuse themselves on. What did they leave?"

"Cybernetics info, it looked like." Nene concluded, grabbing another piece of toast. "It was addressed to a certain someone in the Marduke Institute, but I checked our logs and that person doesn't exist!"

Linna motioned for her friend to wipe her mouth, adding to their leader. "This is bad. It looks like we've gotten involved in something we don't know anything about."

"I wouldn't say that." Priss sat up straight and shrugged, examining their ceiling. Then she shot a playful glance to the rest and stuck her tongue out, dropping the cool routine. "Its all pretty clear what happened. Stuff like this used to happen in the underworld all the time, and you hear about it through the gangs. It's simple. We picked up someone else's turf doing this takeover, and someone who doesn't know that it's changed hands is still trying to conduct business."

Sylia gave a grave nod.

Nene blinked, pausing in mid-devour of a helpless piece of fruit. "But this whole thing is just a takeover of an institute that doesn't exist, right?"

Linna had her mouth too full of soup to answer.

Sylia smiled. "Yes and no. It existed as for reputation, not in facilities. Now it exists in both, and someone's obviously decided we can do a favor for them, not knowing about our loyalties. Which I suspect are quite different from what Gendo represented this agency as."

Now that her mouth was clear, Linna responded. "Jay-chan's told us about the guy we took this from, right? Didn't he say that he was all mixed up in dark and crazy schemes? I bet this is one of them."

Priss popped a donut and nodded her agreement.

"We'll know more when we examine the data." Sylia lifted a cup of hot chocolate to her lips and took a drink.

OoOoO

"Listen to this..." read a woman on the train Ritsuko sat next to after she'd boarded at the last stop. The woman was reading some popular trash to her friend and Ritsuko would ordinarily have ignored her, but the quote came through loud and clear. "...Of course I have to list myself among the people I hate most. I've destroyed everything I ever longed to have and before I'm through I'll have destroyed the rest, too. Who knows what I'll miss out of this world? Probably nothing, but then I never expected to miss Yui like I do. I certainly never missed any of the others I killed, and I laugh at the prospect of missing Ritsuko after she's dead. Who knows that someday I might discover something I actually cared for? But probably not."

Ritsuko sat there like a stone as she listened in.

The two women giggled. "Is this insane or what?" The reader asked.

Her friend made some comment. "It goes in with what I was hearing Dr. Stingray of the Marduke Institute say on television, something along the lines of the psychopath going all nuts and publishing this in the secret hope that someone would stop him."

"I hope it works!"

"I think it did. Hadn't you heard he's been removed from his position as head of NERV?" The friend replied, speaking of items on the news a few days ago.

The innocent woman on the train flipped back a few pages, eager to share with her friend. "Here's another good quote; In order to betray the maximum number of people at once, you have to have the greatest power. This can be done by infiltrating any number of secret organizations that exist to grant power and control, but the strongest of these is called SEELE. The members of which are..."

Ritsuko's hair practically turned white as she listened to the names being listed. She resolved to get her own copy of that book.

OoOoO

Jared held a sample drawing book open before him, Rei kneeling close by his side as they discussed this on their floor. "You see?" He said, pointing to the array of faces the drawing book enclosed, each bearing different looks upon their simple features. "These are a sample list of facial expressions, used here to provide examples teaching how to draw them, but a useful list for our purposes as well. You'll note that each one has a name that is an emotion attached to it. Here we have Happy, Worried, Nauseated... Let me show you a connection. They're so named because to those observing them they convey clear meaning. That is the purpose of facial expressions, they are non spoken communication. A person may look upon another and see with a glance a general statement of that other's well being by the positioning of the muscles of their face." He flipped a page, then pointed. "Now you don't use this one as much as you used to, but *this* is what your former expression said."

"Disapproval? I don't understand." Rei regarded him.

Jared ticked points off on his fingers. "Turning your back to those who are addressing you, refusing to acknowledge others... The list could go on but your gestures, mannerisms and expression all built a barrier against approach by others. You must continue to change that if you are to completely best the loneliness that fills you. Sending out signals that tell others to avoid you is not how you want to encourage friends. Friends are below family in terms of potential emotive reward. Siblings and birth family are slightly less than the family you eventually create yourself, ie, spouse and offspring. But a spouse is drawn from your general pool of friends. The greater your circle of friends, the wider your choice of spouse prospects will be. None of this matters in the short term because you're too young to get married yet, but in the long term it will be vital. Right now you and I are in a development stage, where we build up our resource of friends, and practice and refine our social skills for the eventual task of marrying, with all of its accompanying rewards. For now let's focus on a set of goals to get our skills and resources developed, because when we switch to a stage where we are to harvest our results it will be much too late to do our any of that. That's what the stage we are in now is for, and if we skip it it will be to our grief and pain later."

Rei sat back on her haunches. "What are the rewards of marrying?"

"Couldn't tell ya." He shook his head. "However, by all reports they can be pretty magnificent, or they can be hell depending on how badly those involved screw up. I think it to be a fair guess that reward is proportional to the sustained effort of both parties involved. If carefully cultivated, I'm sure that like love or with plants the return harvest will be great. On the other hand, if neglected, I'm sure it paints an ugly picture."

Rei essayed a small grin. "You switched metaphors, from farming to painting."

"It made my point clear, didn't it?"

She considered this and had to admit that it was true.

"If it makes you feel better, a neglected farm means a failed harvest. A failed harvest leads to want of many types, from hunger to poverty to disease and so on. Such scenes of want and deprivation were once a favorite subject of certain painters, but they made ugly pictures."

The half angel nodded more eagerly. "I see. You were summarizing."

"Uh huh." He bent back to the drawing book, folding it up and handing it to Rei. "Now I want you to practice those expressions in a mirror until you have them right. They shouldn't be exactly copied as personalization and variation are not only inevitable but desired, but you really ought to capture the spirit of making them."

Rei sucked in her lower lip and bowed, accepting the book. "Understood."

Misato chose that moment to waltz into the living area, dumping a load of groceries unceremoniously on a couch. "Hey, you two, wait up a second. I've got some news to tell ya."

Both kids watched as their guardian and roommate crossed over to the one wall and checked a date on the swimsuit calender. Pivoting to face them, she said. "I've got some bad news: Word has come down from the UN that we've got to trade one of our Elemental Knights for one of the Muscle Knights elsewhere in the world. We'll be giving up Rei and her Frost Knight in exchange for the Muscle Knight and pilot from Germany. We'll also be getting a new commander at the same time."

"Who will it be?"

Misato looked away, out the window. "He's the former commander's brother." She sighed. "He changed his name to Ikari after his wife divorced him when their only child was stillborn. He lost control, drinking and gambling their livelihood away, so she left him."

"He does not sound like an improvement over the former commander Ikari." Rei said softly. "Will he be?"

"I don't know." Misato said honestly. "But there's not much we can do to resist the appointment. After the scandal with Gendo, NERV's reputation as an organization dropped into the toilet. Why they elected someone so close to the old commander I don't know, but we don't have any favors we can call in to put a stop to it." The captain stood taller and let her arms uncross, dropping them to her sides as she addressed the children. "He arrives from Old Tokyo in ten days. That's more than sufficient time to get our own preparations for the change underway."

"This sounds like a plot to change figureheads." Jared objected. "I don't like it."

"Yeah, but we don't have much choice." Misato sighed and shook her head, casting a longing glance toward the kitchen. It was a hopeless gesture, there hadn't been a beer in the place since they moved in. Something about all the stress recently had caused Misato to start vomiting every time that she tasted one.

Jared had a airhypo injector and wasn't saying a *word* about it. Though in the spirit of good faith and sportsmanship he'd done more than his share of cleaning up the messes that resulted when the special drug in her system caused her to vomit at the taste of alcohol.

OoOoO

"It's a program not unlike the Sexaroid modifications, though more blunt and primitive about it. Not only that, this is meant to be employed on a teenager instead of an unborn child." Sylia took a sip from a cool glass of juice. "I find it disturbing that anyone would even think things like this up, much less try and implement them."

Priss was shaking her head. "Jared was right." She took a bite of squid as they all shared their findings over lunch. "Some people on this world are *sick!*"

Nene giggled. "Jay-chan would say that just watching you eat squid."

Priss gave her a puzzled look as she sucked a mouthful of tentacles into her mouth.

Linna began laughing. "You know Nene, I think we all might do to try more American style food, like he eats. What do you think?"

The perky redhead licked her chops eagerly. "Mmm! You mean like sno-cones and milkshakes? I can't WAIT!" She sculpted her hands down across her smooth and slender sides, posing seductively, eyes a twinkle. Then she broke it up with a giggle and grabbed a handful of pocky sticks.

"Those are for snacks, Nene." Linna corrected her.

The redhaired one shook her head negatively around a mouthful of chocolate. Once she swallowed, she said. "As far as *I'm* concerned, chocolate is for *always!* Mmm! Hey, do you think we can order out for a chocolate cake?"

"We should probably order pizza this evening." Sylia rejoined this conversation. "I agree with the idea. We'd all best start getting used to American style cooking. It wouldn't harm our prospects any to learn to prepare it, either. But save that for this evening. Nene, have you finished decoding their read me files?"

"Mm Hmm!" Said files were produced and handed around the table. Priss got a hot squid and burned her fingers, dropping it on them, but promptly reclaimed the morsel and held it between her teeth as she started to read the grease-stained sheets.

"This is heavy stuff!" Linna declared, reading the first page. Lunch was ignored as they absorbed enough of the information so they knew what was going on, then papers were lowered and Sylia removed the headset that she'd been wearing this whole time.

Linna shook her head sadly. "No wonder Jared called for help on this assignment. If people are willing to give this kind of order, they've got some seriously messed up freaks in charge around here."

Priss was staring at her squid-stained sheets. "Let me get this straight. They want us to kidnap a young girl, brainwash her with drugs and computers, insert this cyberware control crap into her body and send her off to seduce Jay-chan?"

Linna frowned.

"That appears to be the size of it." Sylia admitted.

"I won't do it!" Linna and Priss declared in unison.

Nene yawned, dipped one of her papers in sauce, and began dribbling patterns on her rice with it. "That's obvious. I didn't think we were going along with whatever it was they asked."

The outraged Knight Sabers quieted at the obviousness of Nene's remark. Sylia smiled at the help. "We've only intercepted their plans. Now we get to decide what we're going to do about them."

"How we're going to foil them, you mean." Linna said.

The redheaded girl giggled, then shot a wicked grin to the rest. "I dunno. Since these are the prime bad guys, with access to enough technology to hack our security and give us this order, not to mention *having* the power to do the project. Maybe we should let them think we are going along just so they don't send the same order elsewhere." She fluffed out her hair and batted her eyes. "I volunteer. We'll just skip all of the drugs and cyberware. I'll have to act it out."

There was silence at the table for long moments.

Linna pursed her lips. "Shouldn't we get to draw straws or something?"

OoOoO

Ritsuko entered the room, throwing her jacket on the floor and pulling off her socks to toss about randomly. Jared hid a wince, the two 'mature women' had somehow abdicated all of the responsibility for cleaning up this place to him, and he doubted either was aware they'd even done it.

Dropping her purse in a chair, Ritsuko opened a bag and took out a pair of folded uniforms. Tossing one each to Rei and Jared, she said. "These are our new third generation plugsuits, designed and provided for us by the Marduke Institute. They provide excellent protection at a low mass penalty, are multi-environment capable, and a ton of other things you'll learn about in training. They're a marvel, even their interface assistance capabilities are a hefty 15% above the original plugsuit design." Ritsuko pulled out of her bag another set of cellophane suit packages, tossing one to each child. "You'll wear them with these. They're a new uniform suit jacket, utility belt, and boots, all color coordinated with your Knights." The doctor gave forth a real smile, focusing her attention toward Jared. "I hope these meet with your approval. I doubt there's a military on Earth that's quite so well dressed."

Jared tossed her back a sly and cocky grin. "That makes us the best."

The redhaired pilot opened both his packages and removed a blue jumpsuit that was sleeker and more fashionably tasteful than either of the previous designs. Immediately he recognized Linna's handiwork adding a softer edge to Sylia's technical genius. The belt, half-cloak style jacket and boots were all done in colors like the Thunder Knight, white spiced up with every color of the rainbow as tasteful decoration. In all it bore a good resemblance to the officer's dress uniform aboard the starship Nadesico.

"They're beautiful." He said simply.

Rei had already stripped and was activating the vacuum seal of her plugsuit. The icy white fabric sucked close to her skin, yet managed to be more modest than earlier designs, being somewhat thicker in important areas. She removed her pale blue uniform cloak from its package and fastened it on, going for her belt next.

"Well, Jared? Aren't you going to try yours on?" It was Rei who'd asked him.

He blushed. "Could you do me a favor? Next time you want to change can you do it in privacy? I'm not all that keen on being exposed to sights that are tempting, especially if they're my own sister."

She blinked at him in total incomprehension.

He snagged his uniform and left the room, saying. "Ritsuko, could you *please* tell Rei why it isn't nice for boys to see girls unclothed? It's about time someone explained all about modesty to her."

Ritsuko studied the puzzled Rei who was staring after him uncomprehendingly. She shook her head and sighed. "Well Rei, it *is* about the time you got the birds and the bees lecture. Too bad Misato isn't here, she'd enjoy relaying this."

The Captain of NERV's security popped her head into the room. "Did somebody call my name?"

OoOoO

The labyrinth of NERV was understood by practically no one. There were parts which had not seen a living soul since their creation, and others that were so secret even the men who'd worked on them had mysteriously vanished.

The maze of air ducts and tunnels was mystifying enough, but that was nothing when compared to those parts that had been deliberately concealed. There had been so many lies and layers of deception interwoven in various parts that even they who thought they knew them best only knew a little.

The man who knew them all was Gendo.

It was one of those things an obsessive megalomaniac devoted every attention on detail to. Knowing one's hiding holes could not be delegated, and as the weaver of most of those lies that kept them hidden, he knew the truth better than anyone. It also allowed him unrestricted access to practically every part of the Geofront, secure or not, in spite of the joke that NERV called their internal security.

Probably the best joke of all, Gendo pondered, was that his private command quarters had just vanished from the internal layout, sealed off and no longer even locatable where it had been. There were enough system and subsystems and things no one truly understood, that the machinery to move rooms about had gone unnoticed, and would evade even a concerted search looking for such a mechanism.

Gendo was not many things, but as a plotter he excelled above all.

And now he heard that his brother was being drafted in to take his place. "Interesting. I sense Keele's doing here." Gendo said over steepled hands - a habit so ingrained by now he didn't even consider abandoning it, in spite of the fact that no one would likely ever see it again and live.

A direct tie-in to the MAGI super intelligent computers gave him access to all of the information in NERV's considerable files. It wasn't enough, though. Only days ago he'd had access to some of the most brilliant minds on the planet, people who were able and willing to answer his questions, solve his problems, even run his errands for him. It was intolerable to be so cut off from the true reins of power.

Releasing his pose, the genocidal madman drummed all his fingers upon his desk, once, very deliberately.

On the viewscreen before him was a feed in from the NERV infirmary, showing Yui dressed up in a hospital gown being monitored by equipment. Equipment showed that someday soon she would wake up from her coma.

"Soon, Yui. Very soon now. My brother is an easy man to manipulate. Keele thinks he can do a better job than I. We shall see." The revoltingly evil man whispered to himself. 


	6. Chapter 6

Otaku Reflected  
Episode Three, Eva Revolution

Part Six  
A Superspy in the Knight

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

Jared vaulted over a low wall, cradling a rifle close by his side as the surfaces around him pinged with others' missed shots. Rolling across the ground he yanked a grenade from off his bandoleer using his off hand and pulled the pin with his teeth, tossing the object in the direction of his foes as he scrambled for cover. He sprang up and shot a row of his attackers before ducking back behind a post and dropping. The superspy was about to spider crawl under a web work of branches when four grenades rolled to a stop before his face.

They exploded.

Jared emerged coughing from the rolling clouds of multicolored smoke, covered in four colors of paint and tearing off his protective face mask. His classmates let up a cheer of victory.

Priss was applauding as well. "Very good, Jared." She shot him a point and a grin. "Even the best can be brought down by numbers." She turned a nasty smirk to the rest of the class. "So now that you've had a chance to play bullies, let's divide you up into teams and play some 'Divide and Slaughter'. Where the *rest* of you get to find out what it's like to be outnumbered."

Massive groans ensued.

OoOoO

"Rei, what is it?" One of the half-angel clone's new friends asked. For the first time since she had begun thawing, the girl was sitting stiffly frozen, staring off into space.

Well, not exactly space.

One of her other friends followed her gaze. "Jared? Why are you staring at him for? I mean, he's a hunk, but you're as much of a hero as he is. You just haven't gotten as good a chance to fight is all."

Struggling, the clone answered. "Jared's abilities are superior to mine in piloting. It is not the cause of my attention in this case, however."

"So what's the drool for?" A third friend asked.

All three quieted instantly when a small trail of blood escaped one of Rei's nostrils to coast down her face. She answered them. "I just had the functional differences in boys and girls explained to me by my commander."

The three friends took counsel together a small way off.

"Sick, she *can't* be falling in love with her brother!"

A cute girl tossed a look in said brother's direction, watching him lithely perform on the gymnastics equipment. "Um, I hate to tell you this, but *I* would, in her place."

No one disagreed with the girl.

"This is bad. We've got to set her on the right path!"

"Yes!" One vigorously agreed with the former. "By getting him first!"

Vigorous agreement came on three sides.

OoOoO

Sylia stood in the midst of their vastly reworked classroom, beside bulky, simulator-style, pod-like devices, each with an open hatch and a couch inside. The desks had been all pushed back to the rest of the floor space to make room. She gestured to one and told the class their introduction. "These are first generation implanted learning capsules, each of them capable of bestowing an equivalent to a college education in a specific field of study. Today they are set for athletics, dance and martial arts in a combined overview package..."

Everybody stared at the slam of the door to see Toji, looking despondent and miserable, returned to class at last.

"You may take your seat." Sylia nodded to him politely. "The class representative will inform you of changes to the regimen and course work since you have been gone."

Toji just stared at her, giving no indication of respect at all. "Who are you? And where is our regular teacher?"

Sylia merely smiled more knowingly. "The former teacher of this class is probably busy exploring the seafloor of what *used* to be Amsterdam. He has received a research grant and is busy in that field. I am your new instructor, Dr Sylia Stingray. Now you may be seated."

Knowing that he wasn't up against some mere substitute, Toji sulked off to his seat. He no sooner got there than Kensuke was whispering about the changes and why they'd had them. He'd gotten no further than the third sentence when Toji sprang out of his seat shouting. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE GOT THE ROBOT PILOT IN OUR CLASS!"

Jared coughed into his hand, having expected this. "Ah, that would be me, actually."

Toji charged at him, knocking aside spare desks in his progress. A fist came down which the redhead casually dodged, then asked. "Care to tell me what this is all about?"

Rubbing his fist (which had struck the wood desk) the enraged student shouted. "You killed my father!"

"Fine, want to kill mine?" Jared dodged another fist.

"Huh?" Toji stopped in his tracks, having been momentarily shaken out of his anger.

Jared looked away, hands clasped calmly behind his back. "You have an honorable and a loving father who is dead. Mine was Gendo Ikari, a genocidal madman who's still alive and capable of harm. Would you *really* want to trade?"

Toji backed up a step. Even as grieved as he'd been he'd heard about *that* scandal. Then his face grew flat and tightened his hands into fists. "Yeah, like father like son, I guess. How..."

He flew back thirty feet, sprawling desks in his almost lateral backward progress until he hit the far wall and slumped down, blood dripping freely from his nose.

Jared lowered the foot he'd used to kick him, appearing *mad!* "Mr Toji, I kill things for a living. I am very good at it. In fact my *being* good at it is often the only thing standing for the survival of the human race. I didn't seek your home out of spite. I DIDN'T cause your father to take those sleeping pills so he missed the alarm to evacuate. I can no more stop causing avalanches in that giant robot than you can prevent loose sand from moving when you run on it. I feel deep regret that your family has suffered, but nothing that I did was meant to cause that any more than your breathing in and out right now is a hostile act toward me. If I *didn't* fight then every man, woman and child on this planet would probably be dead, along with all of their cattle, their sheep, their pets, their fish and their dogs. All of them could be gone for good if there were another impact like the last one."

The redhead paused to look at the stunned student. "So I appreciate your grief. But if you can think of anything that I might have done differently, let me know. I'd like to hear it."

The pilot of Thunder Knight straightened his desk and sat in it. "In any case, the insult I *won't* put up with is a comparison to Gendo Ikari. I'd abandoned that family and that family name long before you even knew about it. I brought it up as an illustration that pain can be far worse than what *you've* had to go through. And the struggles to get a new clan to take me were worse than anything you're going through right now. Sorry, but life can suck worse than to lose your pop." His eyes went straight ahead.

Toji had no idea what to say.

Sylia cleared her throat. "If I may continue?" She asked in her best teacher voice, which was pretty good, actually. "The learning capsules have been programed in a general course in physical and related athletic skills, worth a college degree, but not true mastery of any of them. The data can be implanted in about an hour to two hours, but it will require at least a week before your brains can fully process the information and assimilate it. From that point you can continue to refine the knowledge on your own and add to it, just as if it were learned the normal way. We'll also be giving you the second skill implant at that time, which will be your standard educational courses."

Hikari, the class rep, raised her hand. "Excuse me, teacher. Why don't we get the educational knowledge downloaded into us first?"

Sylia remained enigmatic and diverted the question. "Dr Saotome?"

Jared stood up. "It was a question of priorities, really. Whether you have the school knowledge now or several months from now makes no difference as far as graduation, and none of you guys have jobs. Lack of immediate requirements made it a lower priority than the athletics, where the sooner you begin to develop your bodies, the stronger, faster, and more agile they will grow. There was also the small matter of my own training, where equals to race against or challenge me could spur my own development to higher levels, with the potential benefit of higher performance leading to us all having a better chance of surviving this war."

"Oh." Hikari said, round-eyed.

"Are there any potential dangers to this?" Kensuke asked under his raised hand.

Jared looked back at Sylia. "Dr Stingray?"

She watched him sit down, then instructed the class. "Several actually, though we have done what we can to minimize them. The equipment is reliable, but we can't ignore the chance that some spy agency will get the idea to program you to be obedient agents. Since secrets are their business we would never know if they intended such a thing or not, so our precautions have to act on the assumption that they would. Toward defusing that, we have constructed these from base parts, smelted and fabricated at our own factory with the best quality assurance and security money can buy." ~And better than that, actually, as our boomers guards are an unknown quantity to our enemies and cannot be bribed.~ "Further, we isolated them completely from all outside influences. They cannot be communicated with through radio or other signals, are insulated from interference and have their own internal power. All of which means a foe would have to physically access the machines in order to tamper with them, and they are under armed guard 24 hours a day."

She paused to look at the wide-eyed class, then sat down on the top of her desk. "We have taken the matter very seriously because of the risk involved. But if any of you wish to withdraw to a normal class you may do so rather than undergo this rather unorthodox training."

Some of the class squirmed, but no one did anything.

The teacher became very reassuring. "Don't worry, there's no risk of that happening. It would require a global conspiracy to have the resources to hack this technology." ~And because we know that's what we're up against, we have taken the precaution of setting up this dummy equipment, which according to Jay-chan's suggestion is all perfectly useless. A very small medical probe that will be taped on to 'monitor' all of you during the procedure will actually be accomplishing the implant. Since it shares no parts nor programming with the large, bulky machines that will be our enemies' targets, you should be fine, especially as the conspirators know nothing of this technology.~

Jared met Sylia's eyes, and they shared as if by telepathy. ~There's no way to hide the fact that we're using technology that doesn't exist here. The enemy will know something is up. Let's only hope and pray that our diversion works in throwing them off.~

OoOoO

"This is most disturbing." A large holographic monolith marked '03' commented.

"We appear to have lost control. The Marduke Institute is acting independently. We may have to purge it." '05' answered the first.

"I disagree." Mentioned a block labeled '08'. "We've done a check of their mainframe and discovered instructions commanding them to do this, delivered in the same way that we sent ours, anonymous security intrusion."

Nothing was said for several seconds.

"So they are following orders?" Two protested.

"Yes, just not ours. It would be interesting to know where they came from." said Six.

"I suspect Gendo. He's the one that betrayed us." Five replied.

"Distinctly possible. However, why hasn't Number Four joined us?"

Chairman Keele spoke, overriding that inquiry. "He no longer concerns us, and will be replaced in short order. Do we have the technology the Marduke is using?"

Everyone politely said nothing about the comment on Number Four, a certain death sentence had been given if the man wasn't already dead. Number Eight answered the latter question without skipping a beat. "It was not on their mainframe, only a note that the details would be hand-delivered, and not to put it on any computer." Statements moved so swiftly from there it was difficult to say who said what.

"An obvious attempt to keep it away from us. Whoever gave those instructions had to know we would be interested to make such an obstructive attempt."

"I find myself interested that whoever it was had the knowhow and the resources to put this into operation, not to mention how they seem to have duplicated our methods and predicted our own next move."

"It is simply impossible that technology of this level could have developed without our being aware of it, independent of the resources we control."

"There aren't supposed to be any secrets from us. We own the UN, every national government, the spy agencies and the militaries, not to mention all of the private industries worth owning and several major religions. It isn't likely that a hillbilly thought up anything so ground-breaking, and implemented it in his garage."

"Especially not sending it through our own secure methods to an agency we control."

"Yet anything larger than a single eccentric genius working in secret is either owned directly by ourselves, our companies, or the agencies that we control. That this escaped our attention until it was already implemented hints of something."

Betrayal, though nobody said it.

"Someone was disguising this for it to reach this far unnoticed."

Okay, somebody said it.

"Possibly Gendo, he's had unlimited resources for some years now, and access to leading thinkers and technologies, with the ability to keep things secret, though we did not imagine to this extent."

"What could he hope to gain, I wonder?"

"Order his termination. We ought to have destroyed him for that book he published. It... complicated things." Keele went on without lessening his scowl. "Send backup agents to assist Kaji, it seems we will have more work there than one man can do."

"I have... uncovered a problem," came the whiny voice of Six.

"What is it *now*?" growled Chairman Keele, he hadn't seen so many of his strings being cut since the days when he'd cursed the Savior of Mankind.

"There are indications that Gendo's fleeing was planned in advance. I have been unable to determine if this was due to his planning for all contingencies, or if..." Six's voice trailed off as if he didn't want to contemplate the thought.

"If he actually intended these events to transpire," finished Three. "Could it be he has contact with one of THEM?"

"THEY are gone, finished. The last of the those were hunted down a century ago." Keele sneered. THEY couldn't possibly have survived, he had made sure of it. Still, if they had... "Impossible. If they were still active, then they have their own agenda and would have been keeping their survival secret from us for over a hundred years."

"God has been known to reactivate them."

"Considering what THEY were capable of, and how they were hunted, IF any were to have survived they would have to have kept hidden, and could have spent a century just recovering from the devastation." Three pointed out, sounding uncomfortable.

"Nonsense," said Keele. "It was for the purpose of destroying them that we gained control of mass religion and stamped out true faith. God cannot perform miracles without faith to precede them. He cannot have called another prophet."

"Of course," seconded Six.

"Couldn't possibly be," agreed Five.

There was an uncomfortable silence before the obelisks faded, leaving Keele alone.

The old man's head slowly rose. "I sense a presence. One I have not felt in..." Keele turned without another word to exit the building.

A dragonfly detached itself from the wall, sped into an air duct, passed through a tiny hole, entering a maze of fissures, and finally flew out into the mountains. After a brief trip, it landed on a girl's open palm. The girl placed the little dragonfly on a device the size of a laptop computer and clicked a couple of switches.

"This is most disturbing," said a tinny voice from the laptop's speakers as the recording was played back. The sexaroid listened, recorded, encoded, and sent the data to Sylia. She'd know what to do with it.

OoOoO

The nurse bent over Yui, removing connectors and biomed monitors so the young girl could sleep more peaceably. Her condition had changed over an hour ago, from a coma to ordinary sleep, and they expected her to wake up normally.

Behind the nurse's back, very carefully timed, the door silently swished open and admitted a dark man with a gun in his right hand. The silenced pistol spoke once, not even audible outside of the small room, and the back of the nurse's dress acquired a hole, driving the woman's body down across the bed, over her patient.

Gendo held the smoking sidearm and fought the urge to laugh. He loved killing, most especially women, and as the head of a prestigious organization he'd had to restrain himself else his activities would be discovered and poison his position - a condition that no longer existed, removing that small restraint.

Still holding the pistol in one gloved hand, the black and rotten-souled villain crossed over to the bedside, reaching out with one hand intending to yank the body away from the top of his beloved (as much as that servant of evil could love anything) wife.

As his hand fell on her shoulder the nurse's arm came up and trapped it. Whipping around she lashed out with a concealed knife and the madman's arm fell severed to the floor as he staggered back in astonishment.

The nurse tore out of her skin, shredding free of it as she reverted to form as a C-class military combat boomer, complete with heavy armor and armaments. Plates on her arms, chest and head opened up as she readied a heat laser, a tactical mistake as with that delay Gendo simply fled the room and her main weapon only melted the doorway behind him. Vents on her calves and back opened up and the revealed combat boomer sped off after the fleeing criminal. Behind her, in Yui's room, a small closet opened and another guard and nursing boomer stepped out to perform her duties, waiting behind a curtain for a decent interval in case the quarry circled back to attempt to enter the 'unguarded' room.

No such luck, Gendo got away that day. His knowledge of secret passages and the defenses of NERV allowing him to evade his pursuit in spite of bleeding profusely from a severed limb.

OoOoO

A van pulled up at the Skylord Mansion, disgorging uniformed hospital staff and a very weak Yui Ikari, being helped into the house where the occupants stood ready to greet her.

"Good to see you, miss Ikari." Ritsuko bowed to her.

"Welcome, mother." Rei bowed also.

"Hi!" Jared caroled.

"Oh! I'm *so* glad to finally meet you!" Misato barreled into the young girl and held her consumed in a gigantic hug. "Your son has been exposing all sorts of problems and helping us out in ways that are just impossible to describe! We all owe our lives to him. You should be proud."

The fair haired Yui returned Misato's hug a little hesitantly. "Of course." She sighed, looked around the captain to regard Jared. "But I'm afraid I have a secret to reveal. I am not Jared's mother."

The tableau froze instantly.

Yui sighed, ducked her head and continued. "Being in that Eva for so long, the only things I could think on were my regrets, and chief of those were that I never told Jared the truth. You see, my birth son was named Shinji, but he was born without a spine and lived only a few minutes." Yui refused to look up at them. "Gendo had my son switched with his brother's child, born the same day, and covered it up."

Ritsuko was blinking, her mother had probably been involved in that. "So that would mean, with the marriage dissolved..." she concluded, looking between Yui and Jared. "That you two are not related at all."

Jared had frozen into a solid block of ice at the astonishment.

"Well," Rei blinked. "It turns out his mysterious past has caught up with him."

Jared's block of ice fell over, leaving him stuck in astonishment on his side.

"When he did the DNA trace, he only compared Yui to Rei, never himself." Ritsuko supposed aloud. "He just took his own relationship for granted, which turned out to be a mistake."

"This really is starting to sound like some kind of series, maybe a soap opera." The darkhaired Misato posed.

Yui gently clasped her hands before her. "So Jared. We're not related, so..."

"That would mean I am unrelated to him as well." Rei postulated. "And so..."

The ice shattered and Jared ran screaming over the horizon.

All of the girls looked at each other.

"He'll be back." Misato concluded, folding her arms happily. "If nothing else he'll be unable to resist the next time a battle turns up."

"Can I show you to your room?" Ritsuko asked of Yui. The fourteen-year-old gave a glad nod in reply. They walked in the main room and the younger girl saw something on a wall.

"Ritsuko? Isn't that you? Why would you pose for a swimsuit calender?"

OoOoO

The battle came the next day.

For Jared it was a relief when the next dark warrior arrived. He knew he'd have to kill it, and he had an idea of how (a basic recreation of the series in this case, as the thing's attack and defense strength was just phenomenal), but he was aiming to get hurt less this time as he was considerably less stupid than Shinji.

Or so he hoped, by his track record it wasn't clear so far.

The youth stepped out in his third generation plugsuit and ran to join his Thunder Knight, vaguely aware that this alert had come minutes before they were going to try the first tests of Eva Unit Six, or Yui's Muscle Knight as she'd decided to take control over it.

He jumped up to the shoulder of his Eva, into the plug, and was inserted.

"Initiating primary connections." Maya in the command center calmly proclaimed, going through the routine when suddenly everything went haywire. "Synch ratio has jumped to 400%! We've lost all contact with the pilot!"

"What?" By now the command crew were getting somewhat used to surprises from this pilot. It was becoming a theme. But nothing had prepared them for this one, as the Thunder Knight just calmed down and settled, reducing power to standby levels.

There was no trace of the pilot.

"Oh, no." Yui and Ritsuko echoed each other.

OoOoO

~I feel... most peculiar.~ Jared thought.

~Wait a moment. I recognize this dreamscape. Only... that's right, there *wouldn't* be any inhabitant. I saved Yui the other day.~

There came an eternity of thought.

~Great. I'm stuck in the Eva. I wonder if they'll be able to get me out.~ The thought came close on that's heels about the latest attack and that particular bad guy's power level. ~No, I don't think so.~

OoOoO

"What happened to him!" Misato shouted, for once missing the presence of a cooling influence in the presence of the commander. She squashed that thought. He'd never been any help anyway.

Ritsuko deferred to Yui, who was checking monitors while she spoke. "The Eva unit has absorbed him, taken his soul for its own."

"WHAT!" Hair stood up from every head in that center.

OoOoO

~I've been taken out of this fight.~

Some long pondering followed that realization.

~If an empty Eva soaks up whoever gets into it, then Yui can't use her Knight without the same thing happening to her. That leaves Rei and Frost Knight. They're sadly incapable of taking this bad guy on alone.~

There came a drawn out mental sigh.

~Well, I guess it's time to break some more rules then.~

OoOoO

Three technical staffers for Nerv were standing in a hallway gathered around a drink machine when one of them heard a clank and all three turned around to look at something sneaking along behind them that made their faces pale.

"Well, I suppose tiptoeing is out of the question?" It asked.

The girl among them opened her mouth and shrieked. Both the guys let their drink cans fall to the ground in shock.

It waved. "Shhh! None of you notice me. Just go about what you were doing."

The trio fainted.

"Well, good enough, I suppose." The mysterious figure went on.

OoOoO

Without a steadying influence, the command center had quickly dissolved into horror. It wasn't that Gendo had been particularly *good* about organizing things. It was just having a central authority to keep some kind of direction going had gone missing. That, and Misato was finding being in the dark about critical things until they were already emergencies was a habit she wanted her friends to break, and was telling them so loudly.

Thus it was that nobody noticed the outcome of certain monitors until a shriek split up the commotion in the room. All the attention was drawn to the Evangelion Unit One standing in door to the the human-sized command area.

With some negotiating to fit its shoulders through, the seven foot tall Thunder Knight stepped inside, worked its mouth for a few seconds, then began to speak without opening its jaw. "Misato, status report on the dark warrior."

It was horribly creepy, but the command was so familiar she was looking at the monitor before she'd realized what she was doing. "It's taken position over Tokyo-3, and has deployed some kind of enhanced drill..." She trailed off and her hair stood on end when she realized that she'd just answered an Eva unit that talked.

Maya was a bit more calm about things, partially because Ritsuko was blocking her view. "Estimate it will penetrate the Geofront in eleven hours, thirty four minutes, just after midnight tonight."

Having other people act professionally was calming a few nerves, but the Eva unit standing among them was fraying a few more. It climbed up to the command chair, settling itself down. Again, it spoke without moving its mouth. "Yui, Thunder Knight has absorbed me, yet I remain in control. I suspect it is a side effect of my having circumvented most of their controls, but I think you might want to rethink some of this technology."

The humanoid Knight sighed introspectively. "Right now I really ought to be rescued by the resident Brilliant Scientist of the series. Of course, we're lacking one in our group of heroes, so next we'd go for one in the support group or, failing that, they've got to go find one. Trouble is, none of you are UP to any of that. So I've got to arrange my own."

"But... what about?" Ritsuko pointed a finger at herself.

"Well, no. Meaning no offense, but you're a Recovering Evil Henchwoman. There's lots of good reasons for you to be around, telling us about enemy secrets and whatnot, but we're not allowed to trust you fully until you come to your senses and risk yourself for us in a deep, emotional moment where you rise beyond what's asked and fling yourself selflessly into danger on our behalf."

Misato found herself nodding in agreement almost against her will.

Yui was almost looking hurt. "But... there's *me*, isn't there? I would've done my best to save you. Really, I would."

"I know that. But you're our Hero Thought Lost, and someone's due to kidnap you any minute now, I'm *sure* of it! As for the rest of you... *sigh!* You know if I could have counted on you to perform up to spec none of this silly walking around when I ought to be helpless would be necessary! You'd go and save Yui and then she'd rise above all of her previous challenges to come up with the secret for saving me in the nick of time and all would be well - After a mighty fight scene where we utterly tromp the bad guy."

"How did you get your Knight down to this size?" Ritsuko asked, professional calm be laughed at, she'd already HAD her world destroyed. This was almost restorative in its absurdity. Yui also gave a nod, backing up the same question. She knew the dangers of shrinking those things.

Thunder Knight responded, shaking its head. "There's still so much that you just don't know about these Knight units. The AT field is a wild card, it can be used to accomplish just about anything. Currently I am dividing mine between three functions; operating myself, having a localized warp space around me so that, although I remain a couple hundred feet high, I interact with this world as though only human scale, and a third I'm using for incidentals. Things like flying because I can no longer handle stairs, or the broadcast thought patterns I'm using to communicate with you. Something about the coordination is *very* different from piloting this."

Well, the boy sounded sane, relatively speaking of course, and still in control. That was reassuring. The *problem* was still freaky, but it was something.

The Knight was tapping away at a keyboard. "The problem with an AT field is a simple matter of energy distribution. Splitting them three ways gives each one less power, and so in a contest between, say for example, Knights and Dark Warriors, if both are equal strength and one has to be doing more work than the other with its AT field then the one that has its power more concentrated is going to win. Imagine an example of a Knight having to fight in an environment that was difficult for him but native for the dark warrior, if you want a good test case."

"I see." Misato whispered. "But if a Dark Angel were to be forced to defend against simultaneous attacks..."

"It would split its AT field to cover them and each defense would be weaker. But that covers only a small part of our problem. What you don't have any inkling of is the elemental crystals. They are specialized, independent power wells. More powerful, because they are more tightly focused, but less flexible as well. An AT field can be adapted to just about any need, but as any gambler will tell you, a wildcard is not a whole hand. The crystals are those other cards, and as they are independent with their own source of power, a creature with an AT field and a crystal can use one to do one thing and the other to do another with no loss of power between them. Then there is the regular energy of the Knight unit itself, which you *still* haven't learned to distinguish as separate because in normal Muscle Knights all of that power flows through their AT field, because it's got nothing else to flow into."

Thunder Knight blinked and seemed amazed that it was able to do so. "That leads to a situation where the equation becomes very complicated. With a Lightning crystal I could have a thunder spear in one hand without any cost, and use the AT field to fly, then throw all my Knight's reserve energy behind either one, the lightning spear to attack or the AT field to fly out of range of a strike. It becomes tactical decisions that dictate where that power goes. And you can't afford to waste it because the reserve energy gets used up and needs rest to recover itself. You can only use it in great emergencies anyway."

The Knight looked up from its awkward typing. "I believe that our evil friend up there on the surface is outfitted with a crystal. It's something I've suspected about our enemy for quite some time. They prefer to remain tightly focused while we gain *our* crystals primarily by defeating and absorbing them and theirs. So far it has duplicated abilities they've shown very predictably."

"What kind of crystal do you think that it has?" Misato asked him bravely, feeling it was her job and being reassured slightly by the calm familiarity of his voice, even though it came from what was looking (the scale making things seem unfamiliar) like a white armored madman.

"Force fields would be my best bet. Which constitutes a problem, as an AT field that is generating a defense can be broken through by an AT field used against it. But if a crystal is doing something, it will have a slight edge over an AT field attempting the same thing, the same as a dedicated, specialized tool is going to be more efficient at its task than a general purpose one. A crystal that is generating an effect is going to be proof against an AT field directly opposing it. The crystal is going to win in any such contest. And unfortunately our AT fields are the best we have."

"What about throwing in that reserve power you mentioned?" Misato demanded.

"Misato, that's never something you can plan on. It's unpredictable at best, highly erratic or more often unavailable most of the rest of the time." The Knight warned.

Several of the bridge crew turned white. "Oh."

Yui addressed the Knight. "So how are you going to beat that thing?"

Thunder Knight was incapable of facial expression, but its body language displayed concentration. Leaning back in the command chair, it held up one finger. "First, I cannot, in my present state, fight for much of anything. As I said I'm using up a third of my wild card just to operate. I'd have to drive myself into a full berserk fury in order to make up for that lack and still overcome another AT field. This is worse than a mere AT field and I don't feel much like driving myself into a fury." Another finger was raised. "That leads us to Second. We've got two knights we *cannot* use, and only one we can. That's a losing proposition, we need all of them. Besides, it would be dramatically appropriate."

Little sweatdrops were sent out everywhere.

Ritsuko turned from absorbing all of this to face Yui. "What do you think? Can you free him and make your own Knight operational?"

The fourteen year old shrugged sorrowfully. "It's inherent to the design. They'll grab the soul out of the first person that tries to pilot them."

A chime binged from the command console. Thunder Knight bent down to receive whatever message it was, then seemed to sit a little straighter. With awkward fingers, the bulky Knight transferred part of that message to the general screen and deleted the rest. All the officers blinked as detailed instructions appeared on the command bridge main displays and continued to roll past, complete with some schematics.

The armored head came to focus on the crew. "Implement this." Then turned and walked out of the room.

"Hey! Where are you going?" Aoba called.

The Knight turned partially back. "What? Me? I'm off to go dormant for no explained reason so the rest of you can get on with rescuing me. TRY not to make any errors this time, okay? I mean we've got fans! You can't disappoint them!"

Then it was gone.

Misato turned to face Ritsuko. "That was probably the oddest experience I've ever had in my life."

The doctor had to agree. "True, I think it ranks up there among mine as well. Let's hope things get a little quieter in the future."

Misato snarled playfully, grouching as an aside. "They've been going the other way so far."

Yui had climbed up on the command console, and using methods best left unsaid retrieved the portion of the data file that Jared in his shrunken Thunder Knight had erased. As she was projecting this on a screen, the entire bridge crew got to see an image of what looked to be about a twelve or thirteen year old girl bearing an *amazing* shock of red hair and waving playfully.

"Hey there!" The recorded girl giggled. "It's been a while hasn't it? It always seems that children only call home when they're in trouble, doesn't it? Still, getting caught in a soul-absorbing giant robot *is* kinda a predicament. What seems to me the basic problem is those scientists were trying to add their pilot to the technology rather than the other way around. You can fix that, but it'll take a bit of work. I'll send the schematic alterations to the design sequences over immediately. I hate to use a cliche but you might be best served by reversing the polarity of the phase pulse in your neural synoptic interface generator. That outta do for now. I'll use those designs you sent to work on a more permanent solution to send on a little later. But in exchange you'll have to come visit us!" The redhaired girl taunted joyfully. "Rose is being her usual self but Sasami, Ayeka, Ryoko and I really miss you. You were as much fun to play with as Tenchi! And an even *better* Guinea Pig!"

The diminutive redhead on the screen flexed her minuscule muscles. "I'll get right to work, as we can't have an armored robot coming over. It'd ruin *all* of Katsuhito's careful and loving work to have it stomping on a garden. Not to mention being a real waste if that world got destroyed. So much beachfront property, too."

She stuck her tongue out at the camera, pulled down an eyelid, then waved merrily. "This is The Greatest Scientific Genius In The Universe, signing off!" The child caroled in a melodious and carefree voice.

Misato had sweatdropped until her hair was wet. With a strange smirk she said. "I think I've got another candidate for my list of most weird experiences."

Ritsuko was shaking her head "I find it hard to believe that a youngster could analyze and propose a workable solution to our problem in what had to be less than three minutes. She couldn't have had that email on her end for any longer than that, and the problem she was replying to was very specific. So unless what is happening now was staged..."

"It must be." Maya had been looking over the diagrams. "This is far too detailed work and should have taken hours." She, too, was shaking her head. "Unless she really was the greatest genius in the universe, that is."

Hyuga coughed into his fist.

Aoba cleared his throat.

"I believe what those two are trying to say is she might be, considering Jared's gift for bringing up strange circumstances. Do we have anything else?" Maya translated on their behalf.

A great number of people stood there staring at each other.

Yui stared at the bridge techs, then sighed, surrendering. She had been looking over the designs, too. After completing a heartfelt exasperated exhale of breath, the diminutive doctor addressed the two ladies who were in control. "Unfortunately, this is the closest I can guess to correct. I'd never had a solution to this problem before, as you might've guessed since I *was* the first one caught in it. If I had a month or a few years I could check this." She shrugged. "But the theories rely on things I'd never postulated before. It would be worth a doctorate just to fully understand some of them. One thing IS for sure, it's not a cheap fake."

Misato, woman of action, rounded and faced the main screen, clenching a fist. "Well, we have less than twelve hours to reactivate Thunder Knight, rescue Sky Lord, ready our remaining Muscle Knight for combat and prepare *and* execute a plan of battle to eliminate this dark angel!"

Hyuga leaned over and whispered to Aoba. "I TOLD you we were in a sentai series."

The latter tech just nodded. 


	7. Chapter 7

Otaku Reflected  
Episode Three, Eva Revolution

Part Seven  
A Superspy in Peril

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

Misato slammed down the phone headset, after concluding her call. "I'm starting to forget that we ever called these things Evangelion Units. I can't believe it, looking back on it. Who came up with such a screwy title, anyway?"

Ritsuko had her rump against the counter, leaning against the control panel lazily while her gaze was focused tightly on her friend. "Are you sure you even had to do that?"

Misato collected herself, gazing down on the control center from the command chair that Gendo had, until recently, occupied. Her face reflected the information displayed. "Our current data supports everything the Sky Lord said. The hellspawn has trouble engaging multiple targets simultaneously, therefore we need to act from as many different angles of attack at once, with as much firepower as possible, as we can to have our best chance of success. It's that simple."

Ritsuko looked at her friend, gauging her. "I'm surprised you were able to convince the United States to part with Unit Three."

Misato scowled, still reading the information projected on the big screens over the command center. "As current commander I have full access to Nerv's emergency powers. With our Eva-modified bomber/transports we can put a Knight anywhere in the world in four hours. I told the president he'd better have Unit Three in the air inside of twenty minutes, or else." Misato leaned back and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "The United States doesn't have a suitable pilot, anyway. Unlike Germany, they can't claim to be keeping them for their own defense because without pilots they don't have a way to *use* them! Besides, they had two Knights. They'll still have one once this one gets transferred to us."

"I admit that another Knight could be useful." Ritsuko deferred. "But why do we have to have *four* to take that thing on?"

Misato closed her eyes. "You saw the tests. How long could a Knight's armor stand up to the accelerated particle beam cannon the dark angel uses against perceived threats?"

"After four seconds of exposure it should cause critical damage to the internal control systems. Six seconds and the beam would punch right through one of our units. The heavy beam-scattering shields Pilot Saotome insisted on would add another twenty seconds of resistance." The dyed blonde sighed. "But we can't expect much more."

Miss Katsuragi nodded. "That's right. Further, tests indicate a base 100% probability the dark angel will fire on any target entering the strict line-of-sight perimeter it maintains. We only *have* two shields, and we can't expect any of our Knights to be taking that kind of assault and counterattacking at the same time. So we switch to a shield-bearer approach. Both our Elemental Knights will have a Muscle Knight standing by to take the attack on the shield they'll be carrying, allowing the more powerful Elemental Knights to focus on working to destroy the dark angel."

Misato once again lifted her face to the screen, this time to the side view showing a current projection of the dark angel hovering over their city. "We've still got eleven of those German type twelve, rail mobile laser mortars after testing its response. Combined with our local artillery, we can put two teams of two Knights each into position and be hitting that thing from every angle at once." She took a sip of hot chocolate. "By saturating its defenses, the dark angel's crystal shield should be split thirteen different ways simultaneously. That ought to be enough of a distraction. The Magi predict that one of our two teams has a 83% chance of breaking through such a fractionalized defense."

"Even if that's so. Can they kill it?" Ritsuko prodded, transferring her gaze up to the displays showing an enemy almost as large as the city itself.

Captain Katsuragi, and current interim commander of Nerv, sagged slightly in her chair, head bowing. "I don't know. What I *do* know is that we've got to maximize our shot at doing this. I believe a focused, high energy beam is our best chance of punching through that thing's hide deep enough to hit the core, which the Magi predict will be at its exact, geometric center."

Misato had her friend's complete attention again. "But Nerv only has *one* positron rifle." Ritsuko protested.

The purple-haired girl had a nasty smile when she wanted it. "So we'll requisition another. The one from the Japanese Strategic Self Defense Forces may even be more powerful. I've already sent Rei Ayanami and Aoba to collect it."

Ritsuko pursed her lips in a frown. "So now all we're concerned about is a distinct problem with our current piloting situation."

"Yui's leading a team on it right now."

OoOoO

Thunder Knight stood in its usual cage in the usual bath of fluid, while cables stretched over cranes and dangled from every catwalk around it.

"Preparing energy flux to reverse polarize the synoptic interface!" Maya called over her shoulder to the diminutive doctor Ikari.

Yui unfolded her arms to lean against the catwalk railing, looking down over scurrying techs and their machinery. It looked like a factory floor with all of that activity and equipment scattered about. "Begin operation!" She called.

Generators began to whine. Extra high-ranking personnel showed up in the sidelines to see if there was going to be success. Rei entered from having finished her mission and just locked Frost Knight into the next cage over.

The cockpit seals hissed as the closed chamber retracted from that stance and came open, spilling a redhaired boy in a third generation plugsuit from the entry plug. This youth was instantly scooped up by family, friends, and trained medical staff and put through a rigorous regimen of cuddles, welcomes, and checking out. In the end he was pronounced healthy and sane (as much as he ever got anyways) and was allowed to speak his mind.

"Ouch."

Jared rubbed his head, advising his guests. "Don't ever get absorbed by a giant robot. It never does anyone any good." He winced at the lump on his scalp. "Why didn't you have a mattress ready, anyway?"

Several people looked at each other.

"New at this, aren't you?" Jared asked. Feeling much relieved, he advised. "When you save anyone who's helpless from the bowels of any giant machine they always flop. It's in the Rules."

Rei duly made note of this, then noticed Maya nearby was doing the same.

Yui exhaled a vast sigh of relief, along with half the command crew. Misato came to the overlook formerly used by Gendo and shouted. "Okay, begin immediate preparation of our temporary pilot interface system described by Washu. Can you do that Yui?"

Doctor Ikari shot the operations director a thumbs up. "Already underway, Misato. We can have the rest of the equipment in place in an hour, then we can process each Eva in ten minutes apiece."

Misato nodded, leaning over the railing. "Good. Make sure that you only do Knights that are currently vulnerable. Rei's Frost Knight is operating fine by the old system, we don't want any surprises from messing with that."

Yui nodded, turning to give a final command to her subordinate work crew, then she headed to another station on her task, leaving the Thunder Knight's cage.

Misato sighed and rolled her eyes.

"I'm not fit for command." She grouched.

Ritsuko was behind her, with comfort. "Don't worry about it. You're doing a fine job."

OoOoO

Jared was wheeled into a medical center and finally pronounced whole. They let him go, and once he got to where he could get clothed he found that his plugsuit was the only garb available. Without hesitation, he put it on.

Rei was waiting for him immediately outside his hospital room, also garbed in a third generation plugsuit. Hers was ice blue to contrast against his much darker shade.

"I'm glad you were recovered." She said, slightly less calmly than her usual.

He nodded in response. "Thanks, me too. It would've been awkward being a giant robot for the rest of my life. Where would I find clothes?"

Rei blinked, confused, and protested. "Giant robots do not wear clothes."

The redhaired boy sighed, putting his hand on her shoulder to look in her eyes. "Rei, statements with obvious and extreme difficulties and low import are intended as humor, not indications of concern. They are called absurdities, and the proper response on recognizing them is to laugh or smile."

Rei smiled.

"There you go." He patted her on the shoulder, moving off with her hurrying to follow him. "We'll have you up to speck emotionally in no time."

She nodded, moving in to place alongside him. "By the way, I would like to borrow a pair of your jeans sometime."

Jared paused, this was curious. "Oh, what for? Don't you have any of your own?"

Rei nodded again. "Yes, but some of the girls at school were interested in getting into your pants, and I promised to help them."

He just stood stunned.

OoOoO

Yui stood before the Eva assembled from pieces of other Evangelion units, parts taken from failed prototypes as well as bits cut off of Unit One in battle - back when she'd been part of Unit One.

The fourteen year old scientist, her current biological age regardless of what clocks or her own life experience would've said, smiled to be completing her biomod notes to her satisfaction. Tests on her Eva *did* indicate that the interface modifications could be put to work in battle, in place of the current design and its notable flaws.

She pressed the button on the notepad computer that sent this information and her conclusion to the command center. Then Yui looked over her shoulder, hearing the door swish open to this Eva cage. "Oh, hi." She smiled pleasantly.

Kensuke Aida, war enthusiast, walked in wearing a third generation plugsuit and afire with the delight he felt at this. The boy was beside himself to be within an actual Eva cage in Nerv headquarters, actually *allowed* to be there and preparing to pilot one!

"Oh, wow!" The boy ran over to stand in front of Yui's Eva. "This is the *greatest!* I never expected I'd get this close to one before!"

The scientist smiled. "I'm glad for your enthusiasm. Someone around here has to have some." She chuckled. "If you stay as excited as you are, you'll probably turn into as good a pilot as Jay-chan."

"Wow! I hope so! Do you really think I could?"

Yui gave a nod, sealing closed her notebook. "If you can stay excited in spite of an ongoing battle, sure you could."

"Precisely why he'll never get the opportunity." Spoke a sepulcher voice.

Yui spun, recognizing that sound. She saw a man staring at her over the barrel of a heavy personal laser - a type of weapon highly classified and only available in prototype in any case. Before she could speak the weapon gave an electric arming shriek as capacitors were brought up, then a bright beam of laser fired out and caught Kensuke Aida in the chest with enough force to knock the boy backwards and over. As he fell out of the line of fire the beam went on to burn a six inch long light scorch mark on the armor of the Eva.

The beam weapon reoriented to cover Yui. She noticed in a corner of her mind that the murderer only had one arm. The left sleeve hung empty just above the elbow.

"Who are you?"

"Hello, Yui. It's been a long time."

OoOoO

Misato was prowling around the battle board, examining strategy and tactics for use in their upcoming battle, when the explosions came. The room hadn't even finished shaking before she was at a phone terminal demanding to know what had happened.

"Explosion in one of the Muscle Knight cages!" Aoba responded from the command center, dealing with whooping alarms and frantic monitors all around him.

"Was it the dark angel?" She demanded, in a panic.

"Negative!" Came the reassuring reply. "Dark Angel still hasn't penetrated halfway through our armor. It's got to be something else... MAGI just reporting sabotage as a 90% probability!"

"I want Nerv Security down there now! And get me a repair team, figure out what kind of damage we're facing there, and how soon we can get that Knight operational! We don't have any extra of them to spare!"

"Gotcha, major Katsuragi." Aoba replied. "But there's a problem."

OoOoO

Ritsuko marched grimly through crowds of security guards rushing about in full armor. Beside her Maya walked with an IV bag held high in one hand, and between them lay the critically injured body of Kensuke Aida on a gurney.

Misato watched them go, feeling lousy about it. She had both arms folded under her considerable breasts and was leaning her back against the wall with one foot raised to place on the wall below her. A casual stance totally at odds with her face, which showed that she was obviously feeling low. Taken in context it was almost a pose of defeat.

She turned to face Jared, who was leaning in an identical pose opposite her, with Rei trying to understand the significance of their positions. In Jared's case the pose could almost be construed as truly casual.

"I don't get it. Who could have done this? And why? Nerv exists to defend the world from the dark angels. Who would do such a thing?" Misato seemed lost.

Jared wasn't. "Gendo." He answered simply, without preamble. "He doesn't care about others, and he doesn't care about the world. Nor does he care about Nerv or about saving the human race. He cares about what his own appetites or concerns are, which don't match with anyone I'd call sane."

Misato had to smile slightly at hearing their queerest pilot call someone else insane. Still, this didn't *look* like a case of the pot calling the kettle black. She was still confused, however. "I'm not saying Ikari couldn't do such a thing, but what did he gain by it?"

Jared began appraising her, certain until now she'd already known. "Yui, of course. I thought it should be obvious. The explosion was rigged to cover a kidnapping. It was just Kensuke's bad luck to be on the scene when it happened."

Misato's face went pale white. "But we've already demanded Unit Four from the United States! What are we going to do? Mr. Aida was our best pilot trainee we had! Now how are we going to get the Knights into battle?" She demanded, looking stricken, as she exploded into action, racing down the hall without an answer toward the command center.

"Is our situation desperate?" Rei asked in the wake of her departure.

Jared remained motionless, considering aloud. "Yui is missing, her Knight disabled by damage we cannot repair in less than weeks. Kensuke is alive, but won't be available to fight this battle with us. That gives us two pilots for four Knights, if we count the two already in route from the United States. Since our plan calls for four Knights acting in concert, I would say that our situation is suitably dramatic."

Rei consciously effected a concerned expression. "If we had only one unassigned pilot why did Misato request two Knights? I don't understand."

"Fairly simple." The redhaired boy explained, still unconcerned. "It is easier to give estimates about machines than it is about people. Misato heard about the extent of the damage to Yui's Knight before she learned that Kensuke wouldn't recover in time to help us in this one. Since she only just learned about Yui's disappearance, she ordered enough Knights on hand to suit the pilots she *might* have. It was well chosen with the information she had." He shrugged, dropping his elaborate pose leaning on the wall. "So we're having Unit Three *and* Unit Four join us shortly from America. Enough for a whole sentai team."

Rei smiled at that, sure it would make him happy - which it did.

OoOoO

A pet carrier phased into existence in Beautiful, Stately, Sky Lord Manor, having an open door and a bowl full of fish sitting invitingly inside.

Pen Pen, poking around, soon discovered this and, since his owners hadn't fed him yet today, ventured inside to start eating fish. Whereupon the pet carrier's door slid closed and the entire thing phased out of existence with a multi-dimensional surge.

OoOoO

Jared loaded Washu's data module in the Synoptic Teacher, then leaned back to get the entire thing downloaded into his brain directly. He had more than a trifling feeling that it may be important.

He also had a plan.

OoOoO

"What is the status of Kensuke's condition?"

"He'll live." Aoba automatically replied to Misato's question without looking up from his busy attempt to handle all the work on his monitors. "Doctors report that his entire body has third degree burns except his groin and head! He's not going to be joining us on duty again soon."

"I see." Misato pronounced grimly.

"How did he even survive?" One of the nameless bridge techs asked.

Misato smiled grimly. "Our third generation plugsuits have considerable armor value. The pilots are now wearing them at all times in case of an attempt at assassination. My guess is that's what saved him."

"What kind of weapon would burn his entire body without touching his face?" Aoba mumbled, still struggling to hold the ongoing emergencies in check.

"A laser. The plugsuits work by distributing energy across a wide area, breaking up their force like a bulletproof vest, with some extra diffusion buffered in. The force required to burn him that badly over his entire surface could only have been a heavy personal combat laser."

"But aren't those classified?"

"Gendo."

Misato's answer served to the entire room's satisfaction.

Another anonymous tech wondered aloud. "But... why wasn't his groin burnt?"

A second grim smile from Misato. "Because spreading shocks to that area would be counterproductive. Our female plugsuit design also eliminates her breasts from the equation, which gives them slightly less overall protection, but we've got to do it for the same reason. Damage distribution shouldn't be shutting our pilots down by hitting sensitive areas."

"Oh." The word echoed from multiple sources.

Their interim commander frowned. "Do we have any idea how quickly Kensuke can rejoin us? Even under maximum anesthetic at minimum functionality."

Aoba scowled, checking that reading. "The doctors already have him in sedation and are applying medication. Samples are being taken and new skin grafts should be available in two days, but there's no hope of their releasing him in under a week. Hospital reports that he can't be used without peril to his life in less than four days."

"Great." The purple-haired commander clearly wasn't pleased. "Has anyone got a fix on Yui's position?"

"Negative. Assuming she survived the explosion she could be anywhere in or out of the Geofront. Outside is probably more likely, if it was kidnappers."

"Not likely. This was Gendo. His power base is still in here." Misato licked her lips dryly, then began issuing orders. "Okay, I want Nerv security to stop prowling the corridors. Gendo has never used them when it didn't suit him. I want those guys to start looking at the floorplans, try to make sense of how they all fit together, then I want guards pacing off all the rooms and corridors to see if they fit with their specs. He's got some kind of secret lair down here. I want them to find it!"

OoOoO

Jared arrived in full uniform (now that they looked cool) at the cage holding Thunder Knight, looking ready for battle. He really hated to do this, but it was almost critical for the kind of atmosphere he was trying to set here.

More importantly, he wouldn't do it if he didn't think he could succeed.

Yui's makeshift job of altering the interface would make the Knights pilotable - barely. This was the most dangerous enemy to date and if his interface crested a certain point, he would be absorbed and possibly obliterated.

But waiting wasn't going to help these problems either.

OoOoO

On the command deck a certain pet carrier phased across dimensions to deposit itself behind a console in a corner, where a certain freshly altered neo-penguin wandered out and a red-haired scientist in another galaxy giggled, recalling the empty pet-carrier.

OoOoO

A bleep on the alarm panels had Hyuga setting aside the ramen snack he'd been enjoying to cry out in panic. "Major Katsuragi! Thunder Knight has just begun preparations to launch!"

"What!" Misato sat bolt upright in the command chair.

Jared's face appeared before she could ask to be patched through. "Hello Misato. Just wanted to let you know. I already guessed that we didn't have the pilots to fill out your wonderful plan. So I'll be going at it alone."

"Wait! Just one minute!" The lady turned with a swish of purple hair to give some commands to her support crew. "Get Rei on the double! Start powering the type twelve mortars to aid in the assault." She swished back to face the screen. "Just wait five minutes, Jared. We'll have full available support for you by then."

He gave single, negatory head shake, looking very heroic and tragically noble as he did so. "Sorry Katsuragi. But I've been lagging in my displays of heroism lately and need to redeem myself. Solo is the only way to go."

The command crew gaped at the tragedy of what was going on here.

Misato almost shed tears as she forced words past her suddenly dry throat. "Jared. I don't know anyone I'd call a greater hero. Please don't do this."

He shot her a wry smile. "The real reason is one mistake against this monster means instant death. I can't allow Rei's first combat to be one so deadly. She's not ready for that. I must fight it, alone."

Ritsuko's throat felt tight as well as she addressed him. "Jared, I can't even conceive of how you could think of yourself as anything less than the perfect hero."

He shrugged, holding his controls. "Look around something to see the shape of the thing. I'm lacking. I don't even have a troubled romance among my fellow pilots yet. This is almost embarrassing. I mean, what will the rest of the heroes say? No heroic rescues of fair damsels innocently brought into this war against their wills, no humiliating misunderstandings, I'm not being raged at by unsatisfied higher officers any more than I'm being praised as a hero of mankind... not even a decent female lead! I mean, the *closest* we get is Rei. But really she's only progressed so far as the Precious Kid That Must Be Saved From Danger. Hardly a fair bet I'll get a sidekick even. Now I find I'm being forced into the role of Genius Scientist *AND* Dashing Young Hero. Fortunately there's precedent. A few other shows have done that, so it CAN be combined into one star. But now I've got to step into the role totally and blow everyone away with my smarts from now on, getting high grades and all that just because the rest of you guys are late getting into things! I mean, Kensuke hasn't even mysteriously overcome his wounds and anesthetic to come heroically staggering into to the command chamber here to insist on being a part of this fight. What am I SUPPOSED to do when none of you will stick with your roles?"

He shot them a cocky grin. "You don't earn hero status punching a time clock. There's no award for being a log collecting a paycheck. You have to go beyond. I wouldn't try this if I didn't think I could do it, guys."

The screen switched off.

"He's cut off outside control!" Hyuga yelled in a panic.

Thunder Knight launched from it's bay, did an immediate unlatch and roll just barely missing the deadly particle beam blast from the dark angel, and came up flying to give it a return blast that was regrettably stopped by its force screen.

"Impressive." Doctor Akagi mumbled.

Misato turned on Ritsuko, yelling. "You know, when that kid was first working here you called him some unkind names. That boy is NOT a twit!"

"I agree. I take back everything I said. Now I'm concerned for him. Will his AT field be able to stop that beam?"

"For about four seconds." Hyuga replied, still watching controls. "But there's going to be a problem. His AT field is not at full strength. He's diverting part of the power to fly."

The major shook her purple-haired head. "It's worse than that. If a beam touches him at all he'll be a goner. The pain would destroy any ability he might have to dodge. Once that happens there'll be nothing we can do for him."

"The MAGI predict the battle will last no more than two minutes, without a significant chance for Sky Lord to get a victory." Aoba regretfully reported, reading his boards.

Faces paled in the command center as Jared dodged another blast.

Pen Pen leaped up onto her desk. "Misato quick! Transform into Pretty Katsuragi and save Jay-chan! You're the only one who can do it!"

Everyone stood frozen, gaping at the penguin. Misato had a HUGE sweatdrop on the side of her head and her eyelid twitched, mouth hung open. Ritsuko was clutching her chest like she might have a heart attack any moment.

Ignoring the stares it was receiving, Pen Pen continued to gaze in open hope, only seeing Misato, focusing all his considerable powers of cuteness on wearing her down.

Misato blinked. "Do I really have to do this?" On seeing Pen-pen nod, she winced, and started twitching. "Oh... this stinks."

The bridge tech Hyuga couched into his hand, saying loud enough to mention. "The choice between being a comic sidekick or a fighting team player only comes once, Major."

Maya didn't have the energy to glare, still busy staring at the reformed neo-penguin. "How can you be so calm about this?"

Hyuga coughed again, speaking lowly. "Uhm, Aoba and I are writing a manga series on the side, based on our experiences here. We were actually kind of expecting this."

Aoba gave a calm confirmative nod. "Yah, it was either have it happen for real or make it up on our own, and so far it's been more interesting to let the real stuff outpace the fake. I know I couldn't come up with something this weird."

Ritsuko was obviously strained near her breaking point to ask the inane question she did. "How is it selling?"

"Really well, so far. I guess we're going to have to include that part about Gendo being a surgically altered monkey anyhow." Hyuga gladly admitted. "I thought that was too weird, but with Misato being a magical girl..."

Misato twitched.

Pen Pen pleaded with her using all of the force of cuteness a magical (or in this case, Washu-enhanced) mascot could cram into liquid, trusting eyes.

Misato squirmed. "But isn't that kind of a stupid name? I mean Jared gets to be 'Sky Lord' and all I get is 'Pretty Katsuragi'? What about when I get married?"

Pen Pen leaped into her arms and warbled. "Pretty mode is just what we call it when you change. Your combat name for fighting evil is Magical Soldier Cutie Emerald!"

"Yaaayy!" Hyuga and Aoba broke into simultaneous applause. One of them had produced party hats out of nowhere and the other had inflated balloons. Somehow even Ritsuko had a hat on and joined them in snapping party favors.

It was the flash of an explosion as seen from the monitors that decided Katsuragi as to the course she should be pursuing. She clenched her fists to both sides in determination, leaning down to ask her pet penguin. "Okay, now what do I do?"

Pen Pen leaped, performing a cute little mascot twirl and flip, which just happened to serve as the call beacon to the lab of The Greatest Scientific Genius in the Universe, who had been waiting for such an eventuality, and with a ripple of disturbed dimensions, a green gemstone in a fancy necklace appeared to fall into Misato's suddenly outstretched hands.

"Have you been taking any alcohol?" Ritsuko demanded of her friend seriously.

Misato was too stunned to properly reply. "Huh?"

Doctor Akagi folded her arms. "Jared was the one to tell us that your powers were inhibited by alcohol. I'm not sending a magical girl into battle with her powers impaired."

Aoba wondered aloud to Hyuga if Fuyutsuki really was a robot in human guise over the bowl of punch that had been set on the table. Celebratory streamers hung overhead.

Misato paid no attention to them, shaking her head. "No, I haven't been able to touch a drop since I moved in with... Jay-chan?" She directed a stunned look towards her neo-penguin, aka magical mascot.

Said penguin gave a very professional nod. "Then that means he must have broken the curse that was put on you by Cyber Jew. The Gemstone Girls are getting ready to be together again! It was said that only True Love could break the spell, but since here you are again, it must have been he that did it! Now that their leader has been cured the rest of the team can be gathered! But first you *gotta* save Jay-chan!"

Aoba and Hyuga gave very firm nods, toasting with their drink glasses.

"True love?" Ritsuko sweated. "Him and her? Talk about age difference."

Maya's mind was just boggling. Hyuga helped her to a little slice of 'Remember The Love' magical girl memorial cake they'd had delivered.

Misato hurried to put the necklace on, then froze, sweatdropping, unable to believe she was doing this but going forward anyway. "Ugh, are there words that go with this? You know, trigger the transformation or something?"

"They should come from your heart." Hyuga and Aoba both echoed professionally.

Feeling clumsy, but having her sense of reality revoked moments ago when this all began, Misato shoved a fist at the heavens and shouted. "By the Power of Love!" A burst of emerald green light shot forth from the crystal on her chest, expanding in a ring of change that swept over her. The uniform she'd been wearing was replaced by a green outfit with lots of very feminine appeal, tons of ruffles and ribbons combined into a beautiful style like you might see on an idol singer going all out for a cute look. Jewelry and accessories, along with a pair of pretty green shoes, completed the ensemble.

Her hair had acquired two perky green bows on either side of her head and her hair had turned blonde all over. She could have faced against Azusa Shiratori for a cute contest.

"Tame, but adequate." Aoba leaned over and calmly marked the day on his Doctor Ritsuko Akagi Swimsuit Calender. Hyuga had finished with snapshots and was now taking notes.

Pen Pen jumped up on Misato's shoulder and explained. "The hair color change will keep *anyone* who knows your civilian guise from knowing who you are when you're in pretty mode. That is unless they see you transform."

"The skirt could be a lot longer." Maya primly complained.

"Actually that's in genre. The power of magical girls could almost be compared to the shortness of their skirts." Ritsuko observed, asking. "So, how do you feel, Cutie Emerald?"

Misato was taking stock of her new earrings and whatnot. "Huh? I feel alright, I guess. Though I get the sneaking suspicion that I could fold rebar in my fist." As an experiment she reached out and twisted a steel plate in her grasp, actually surprised that she could do it.

Pen Pen hopped up high and flapped his flippers hard enough to be actually flying in a sustained hover before her face, which almost astonished people as much as his talking earlier had done. "No time for that now, Cutie Emerald! Now you've got to use your magical powers to save Jay-chan! Hurry up and get in one of those giant robots so you can go out and enter the fight! Your true love is counting on you, Emerald!"

Misato swallowed all lingering doubts about reality and took off running.

Maya was slowly shaking her head. Watching the neo-penguin fly after her interim commander, she groused. "When did we all fall down the rabbit hole?"

The two other techs shared a look, then united in chorus. "You mean this Geofront?"

Maya's face fell into her hands, groaning.

OoOoO

In her lab, eating popcorn, Washu began to laugh herself SICK! The antics of Jared were just too hilarious! She *never* would've thought to perform a joke like this without his having set it all up in advance!

But it was so humorous!

Her scheming mind was already working on other angles. The alterations to Pen Pen had to be pretty extreme, making up a past history and all that so the little animal wouldn't even know about his own part being fabricated. Luckily, she had a machine that would do that. She'd just fed in a few copies of Neon Genesis Evangelion for the characters and a coupla issues of Sailor Moon and Cutie Honey for genre, and already what it spit out was rocking her sides with laughter!

Hm, the next step to this had better be pretty good, too! She moved to implement it, thinking all the while about what fun this mischief was. On her left, a screen focused in on a hospital bed containing a bandaged man on life support.

OoOoO

Magical girl and mascot emerged on the ramp leading to the launch bay where Unit Three was standing. Misato paused in her lunge toward the mecha, saying aloud. "Jared, in your absence but in the presence of what is soon to be my Knight, I give you permission to command my Knight and do so unconditionally. To seal this I grant you my token, only I'll have to wait to tie it on you until we meet again." She took an emerald colored ribbon from her costume and held it out, letting it drop to the floor as she resumed racing toward the Eva.

Pen Pen fluttered up, holding the ribbon in his beak. "I'll see it's tied on him for you, Cutie Emerald. Now you've got to transform into your mecha pilot uniform."

The nascent magical girl, suppressing deliberately a raging sense of unreality about all this, gave what she felt was a firm nod and raised a hand to the air. "Magic Transformation! Give me a pilot's uniform!"

A disk of glowing green energy swept her from head to toe, leaving her in what had to be a third generation plugsuit, tailor fit for her. Soon she was in the entry plug and Pen Pen was fluttering off for safety. Realizing too late that she was too old to pilot one of these things, she triggered the entry sequence and shouted. "Synchronization Magic!"

Feeling the rush of actually linking, the lady came to realize that she was almost at the stage for the most critical connection and shouted the phrase she always heard Jared using.

"Evangelion Power! Charging Up!"

Evangelion Unit Three lifted out of the holding restraints, floating lazily midair while the special effects of an AT field gone wild spread across the mecha's surface.

OoOoO

Ritsuko took command in her friend's absence, watching this all with a detached air of someone who knows exactly what's going on. The look of one totally in control.

She wasn't, but was willing to fake it.

She had Aoba trigger communications open to the Muscle Knight. "Cutie Emerald, we haven't done any experimenting with your own magic powers. So it's unwise for us to rely on them. I'm sending you deeper into the Geofront."

"Huh? What for?" Came the nascent magical girl's return voice.

Ritsuko could not resist a smile. "The dark angel we've got in the basement. The one Gendo was using in his terrible secret experiments to devastate the entire world for his own personal gain. We've decided that we're no longer going along with that plan. We want you to eliminate that dark angel. That should get you a crystal and S2 organs for powering your Knight during battle to save 'Jay-chan'. There's also a spear in there that will be able to save Jared from this enemy. Follow the lit path."

Badly abused cage restraints disengaged from Misato's Eva and she took off to run down the path indicated.

OoOoO

Gendo was just about to unzip his pants, finally having Yui helpless and restrained, when the alarms in his secret command center went off. Angrily he glared at their direction. Lack of two arms had meant that he could not grope and restrain her at the same time, and was considerably frustrated that he had been interrupted before even getting her plugsuit off. He began stalking over into his office.

"What could it be now?"

He tabbed a monitor on, then froze at what he saw there. "NO! They CAN'T! She has to know better than that. This will bring..."

A pair of red eyes had appeared in the hidden sanctuary behind him. "Hello, Gendo Ikari. Thought you'd never see me again, didn't you?" 


	8. Chapter 8

Otaku Reflected  
Episode Three, Eva Revolution

Part Eight  
A Superspy at War

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

Washu giggled and pushed another button, the focus this time on Kensuke in a life-support cocoon.

A change in medications was in order.

OoOoO

"Frost Shield, Appear!"

A cyclone of snowflakes formed and coalesced into the mentioned item. The Frost Crystal could be set to sustain and continually recreate the Frost Shield during battle, but as he aimed to avoid getting hit he settled on a new variation for extra safety and comfort.

"Ice Armor, Augment!"

The battle had now been going on for considerably longer than the two minutes the MAGI gave him. But that didn't bother him at all. Right now he was a bit too busy to reflect, but his gamble on maneuverability verses rate of fire had been paying off.

A cyclone of snowflakes swept up his Knight from the ankles, coating it all with a thin, transparent layer of super-flexible ice that would instantly distort and sacrifice itself under the heat of an energy beam, saving him from vital seconds of critical pain.

Another huge particle beam lashed by him, as he and the dark angel fought with their wits, trying to predict each other. Both had been learning the other's patterns and adapting to match. So far Jared had stayed a step ahead.

~There!~

Thunder Knight cut flying and dove downwards, toward the ground. Since before this his tactics had been always to stay high, so that the particle beams would shoot harmlessly off into space, the next lashing of multi-million-megawatt power fired FAR too high and had no chance of hitting the rushing Knight. Jared dove with all his strength and speed, passing by kilometers of the dark angel's hide while it refreshed and recharged its deadly beam in the few seconds that it required.

At last he was past, and with a combined volt of his Lightning Crystal and AT field's power he momentarily transcended the force screen of the angel, passing bodily through it even as he fell, unable at this moment to take flight.

The Knight sprang, swinging its alloy sword with all its might.

The Dark Alien fired.

Jared's plan succeeded. In a leap he'd cut *through* the massive drill that had been continuously pushing further into the Nerv Geofront, severing that. The particle beam blast actually served him better, slamming into the ground beneath and behind his feet, cratering it and shoving hundreds of tons of earth aside. This did nothing to help penetrate the hole in which Nerv headquarters hid, not even passing to the first layer of armor. But it *did* hit hard enough to twist and warp the drill bit the dark angel had been using. Forcing all that dirt aside had squished the severed drill and now the bore-hole itself collapsed, negating all the hours of progress the bad guy had made.

And Jared struck.

Theoretically, from this point he could withdraw and call the assault mission a tentative success. He'd reset the drill to square zero and given them perhaps another twelve hours if it started over.

But that was NOT enough!

Knowing he was going to get flung out of striking range at any moment, he cast his Heaven's Justice Storm and flung the attack through a rapidly-melting alloy sword up into the bottom tip of the cube from which the drill had been issuing.

The tip was blasted to ruin.

With a spasm like unto pain, the dark angel's force field reasserted itself and flung his entire Knight away to skid and flip back to its feet on a mountain top miles outside the city. Instantly he took back to the air, barely dodging another deadly particle beam.

It was so close he'd lost his Frost Shield to the near miss.

Jared realized doing a solo attack on the dark angel to save the others was *terribly* in genre for him - which was why he did it, of course. Heroism came with a price, you know. But he was as yet undecided whether the shrieking hordes of nubile would-be girlfriends were part of the price or the reward.

In his case, probably both.

The German type twelve laser mortars chose that moment to appear from ports all over the city and began to light up the dark angel's defense field with their simultaneous fire. The dark angel replied by blowing through a mountainside and annihilating the main power distributing grid on the other side.

Hmm, Jared felt a song coming on. Pausing in his flight, he deliberately posed while broadcasting as the city listened in frightened huddles in their emergency shelters and the Geofront listened on monitors and through speakers.

"There comes a time  
when you face the toughest of fights.  
Searching for a sign  
lost in the darkest of nights!"

The cube-shaped foe shot another particle blast at him, which he dodged with much greater ease than he could've before. Warming up to his song, he continued to merely sing as he opposed this enemy of all humanity.

"The wind blows so cold  
you're standing alone  
before the battle's begun."

He held out one arm and his frost crystal flared with blue energy and light, causing a snowflake-filled wind to blow which coalesced into a frozen shield of white ice on his left arm. Then his volume increased dramatically and originating from his two remaining crystals came a flood of energy that flowed down his Knight's right arm and into that hand.

"But deep in your soul  
the future unfolds  
It's bright as the rays of the sun!"

With a suddenly blazing bright electric spear in his Knight's right hand he attacked the hovering monster, sending forth a beam of laser energy bright as fire with twin helixes of white lightning surrounding it. For the first time something penetrated the dark angel's field and scored a trench into its body.

Then Thunder Knight was dodging again, flying about leaving streaks of rainbow light behind him as he dodged with double the speed and agility of before.

"You've got to believe,  
in the power of love!  
You've got to believe,  
in the power of love.

The power of love."

OoOoO

Misato was watching the suddenly shifted fight as she broke through the final security locked gates (Gendo having changed the key, but really no one had tried. Breaking through into the room was demanded for dramatic emphasis) and into the LCL chamber where the Dark Angel awaited, hanging partially dismembered already and speared to a giant cross.

Misato had her Eva lunge forward and grab the haft of that spear, then shouted aloud as Jared's next lines came over the speaker, simultaneously slashing with the weapon to lay bare the creature's previously hidden core.

The verse continued as Misato, seeming in slow motion, stabbed down upon the red orb in the captive dark angel's chest. Her own Knight got a crystal to form on its chest and the light from the creature's explosion erupted like a geyser, sending a red beam shooting clear through to the surface where it illuminated the other angel and Jared's fighting Knight already in combat.

OoOoO

Entry gates opened in the ground on the surface and Frost Knight appeared, backlit by the emergency glow of twirling sirens.

"Lazing in motion  
there's a light that flows from your heart  
it's a chain reaction,  
and nothing will keep us apart"

Jared's Thunder Knight dove to grab Rei's Knight, rolling away clutched together as the deadly particle beam again blasted down, causing a minor earthquake it displaced so much dirt. The pair of them performed an end-over double flip as he used his crystals again transcend the dark angel's force field, throwing Rei's Frost Knight through the opened barrier to use her own crystals to create a spiderweb of cracks in a several hundred yard wide bit of the enemy's suddenly frozen hide.

Misato's Knight appeared on the surface of the ground behind them as the final glow from the red light geyser faded away. Locked in her hand was the Lance. Both the Frost and Thunder Knights joined her, rolling into place beside her as the hellspawn's AT field tossed them back from their attack on it.

"Stand by my side,  
there's nothing to hide.  
Together we'll fight to the end."

Both previous Elemental Knights focused their AT Fields forward and locked Frost Shields together against the gathering blast about to come from the dark warrior, shielding Misato behind them as she wound up for a throw.

The beam came.

The Lance was cast.

The one diverted the other and a hole was merely blown in the creature's north face, far too far away to do the core any harm in spite of leaving a gaping tunnel right through the alien creature itself.

Jared's Thunder Knight grabbed hold of both others and again took to the air.

"Take hold of my hand  
and you'll understand  
what it truly means to be friends!"

OoOoO

"They've lost the Lance. They'll never have sufficient power to finish it now. Ritsuko, what are you doing?" Maya asked.

"They'll need all the help they can get!" Ritsuko somehow firmed around her jawline and took off running, shucking her heeled shoes to gain speed.

"Wait!" Maya called after her. "Where are you going?"

Ritsuko was running toward the empty Unit Four, shucking her lab coat and calling. "I may not be able to *pilot* the thing to save my friends but I'm sure going to die TRYING!"

Maya had gone pale. Was NO ONE sane around here anymore?

Kensuke came staggering up to the bridge, holding an arm tight to his side as his other clutched the doorframe, woozy with painkilling drugs. "Hey, someone say there was a fight going on here? Why wasn't I invited?"

"WAIT! RITSUKO!" Maya called down to the entry cage.

But it was too late. Servos had already brought the entry plug to where the primary connections had to be made. Dr Ritsuko Akagi had arced her back as she loudly cried.

"Evangelion Power! Charging UP!"

OoOoO

"You've got to believe,  
in the power of love!  
You've got to believe,  
in the power of love."

Gendo stood holding Yui as a shield, backing as quickly as he could arrange from the hulking, darkish shape that followed him.

But that shape made no other move, afraid of hurting Yui.

Gendo smirked in self-congratulation, as he spat taunts at his pursuer. "I have always based my plans on the presumption that other people are nicer than me, and I have never in my life been disappointed."

He slammed his arm stump against a door control and twelve tons of safety steel of the vault-style entrance came smashing closed on the mysterious being with red eyes.

OoOoO

"It gives meaning to each moment  
it's what our hearts, are all made of  
You've got to believe,  
in the power of love.

The power of love."

The three Knights has become separated and now the dark angel was mercilessly focusing his power on the weaker two of them. Frost Knight had a beam pass over it, without any sustained power, and still her Frost Shield got vaporized and the icy coating over her armor, duplicated from watching Jared, flashed and was almost gone.

A beam caught Misato's Knight right square on the chest, knocking her backwards and instantly freezing her mind with the pain. Jared leaped in, grabbing her hand to pull her clear, but the deadly beam followed just as fast and Misato's Knight fell in two equal pieces, top and bottom halves, to the cratered ground.

The beam followed Jared away, stripping off the vital protective coating of ice.

"You've got to believe,  
in the power of love!  
You've got to believe,  
in the power of love."

Somehow the type twelve laser mortars spoke again from some reserve of power and Rei got her Frost Knight to concentrate a blast through the weakened force field, but all to no good. Though she'd scarred the surface, the creature's core was still far too far within.

Jared rolled away, finally succeeding in throwing off the close following beam by the intervention of a second's reprieve by dodging behind a small mountain.

But the cubic alien was overexerting itself, drawing beams faster than it had before, and Rei's Knight was swiftly and cleanly cut in half before she could think to dodge.

In that moment Jared responded with a deadly, focused beam with all the power of his crystals behind it. The mighty force gave the distracted alien a powerful blow, rocking it hard and blowing off the entire southern face, cut cleanly off to fall away and lie in a heap on the city.

Both Knight and Dark Angel faced each other, recuperating.

"It gives meaning to each moment  
it's what our hearts, are all made of  
You've got to believe,  
in the power of love."

The launch gates opened once again, revealing the form of Eva Unit Four. Bare, unpainted metal glinting in the emergency lamplight.

Springing upon her immediately, Jared *threw* the Muscle Knight straight toward the tunnel hole blown through the creature by Misato's Lance throw. The creature replied by firing a blast at him, which he dodged, leaving a streak of rainbow light behind him. Then the combined power of his field attempting to cancel its, and his reply blast back with all crystals overcame the shield long enough for Eva Four to fly through.

The shaky and unbalanced Eva Unit Four landed within a hole created in the monster and knew what it had to do. She focused all her Knight's wildcard and reserve power into a blast that barely reached the core. The dark angel by now was fleeing, trying to avoid the twin dangers of Jared's external attacks and Ritsuko's internal ones.

They struck together.

"In the power of love."

The fourth dark angel sped even faster away when a massive particle beam came from back over Tokyo 3, where Misato's Knight had dragged itself into a firing position, its Earth Crystal fading with the glow of having shot that blast.

Finally cored right through the heart, the dark angel crashed to an untidy landing in the ocean surf of a partially sunken and abandoned portion of city, where it lay dead.

"In the power of love."

The silence was deafening.

Celebrations began across the city almost immediately.

OoOoO

The doors to the bridge swished open, revealing a tallish older gentleman that most there recognized. In their relief at the successful conclusion to the near-impossible fight, the technicians there almost didn't notice.

Aoba stopped hugging Maya long enough to show astonishment on his face when the figure had stepped forward to be recognized.

"Mister Fuyutsuki?"

The stranger with the image of their former commander's aid turned more fully to face the bridge crew, revealing that his right side had been badly crushed and the skin torn off to reveal the clear armor plates and blinking multicolor lights beneath.

"I am Mecha-Fuyutsuki." It said in a perfectly reasonable tone of voice. "I activated when my original copy was injured, and have been searching for his attacker all this time. I found him, but Gendo escaped from me. I came here to warn you. I fear his plans are not yet come to naught."

OoOoO

Gendo hauled Yui through another door, the crazed light of fanaticism in his eyes as he sealed yet another barrier behind them. "He's dead. He's *got* to be dead. I knew the bullet wasn't enough. The hospital saved him. The laser *should* have done it, but didn't. I know slamming a door on him only slowed him down, but he's got to stop sometime. He'll come again if I don't get the power to finish him for good. He was always jealous of me."

"Could you please let me GO!" Yui kicked and screamed in his arm.

The madman directed his gaze to the girl. He shouted. "Enough of your whining! If I don't win he'll come for me, you see? Then he'll get you, and it will all have been for nothing! But I won't let him. I'll teach him to *stay* dead!"

Yui was crying, sobbing as she held both hands to her eyes. "But I don't even know who you are! That other man was my teacher in school. How could you hurt him?"

"I WAS YOUR HUSBAND!" Gendo shouted, losing all control.

"You were?" Yui gazed on him with total incomprehension, then she shrank from him. "Oh, no." Yui was shaking her head. "I don't remember... Only, that... what a *terrible* man he was!" She redoubled her kicking and fighting. "Please go AWAY!"

Gendo grabbed her by an arm and flung her beside a vault-style entrance they'd not passed yet. Quickly, one-handed, he swiped a card access key, letting the door motors slide the massive hunk of metal out of his way as he stepped into a command control center deep in the heart of the Geofront, dragging Yui behind.

Through a window on one side of the chamber they could see the pool of LCL with a pale form lying hacked apart in it. Gendo grinned, seeing in the exposed red core a pulse of pale red light, then another, like a heartbeat. "They failed to kill it. Injured, yes. But that will not stop my plans."

"Eww." Yui's face wrinkled up, seeing the grotesque thing on the other side of the chamber's glass wall starting to regenerate itself.

Gendo was already fiddling with controls, hunching his back to peer closely at them in the dim light of the ill-used chamber. "They said I was mad! MAD! But I'll show them. I'll do it to show them ALL! That boy wants cartoons does he? I'll show him a cartoon he'll never forget! I'll teach him to cross me! Wants to complain. Everything all soft and plushy, while I rot in the bowels of this hole. Made Yui forget me, turned Fuyutsuki against me. But I'll make him PAY!" The madman lunged around to a different console, a mean smile on his face.

"Terrible experiments, yes." The madman gathered more of his wits about him, becoming almost calm as he faced the youthened Yui. "But I learned many things in those experiments. Doing them may have branded me a murderer in their eyes, but they'll never know. I learned things I never told SEELE. I learned *many* ways to stop or foil their plans, to turn them to my own ends. I did it all for you, Yui."

Somehow the girl was NOT favorably impressed. Yui began looking around herself for a weapon she might use against this lunatic.

Gendo was now clutching a yellow rubber squeaky duck in his one hand, crushing it again and again as he ground his teeth, making oddly incongruous happy little squeaks as it got mashed over and over. Yui paused at the sight. She *remembered* that toy! It was one of Jay-chan's favorite bath things when he was little. Suddenly she looked around her surroundings with new eyes.

This was one of the mobile command centers! She'd taken Jared here when he was little to show him around. The duck must have fallen out of his hands then.

But if this was what she was thinking, the controls to raise this room should be over there. If she could get there the room could be raised practically to the door of Nerv security! She began to edge over that way.

Gendo was still mashing his teeth, seeming obsessed in his inability to smash the yellow squeaky duck out of shape without it instantly returning to form. While he tried to crush the toy he muttered. "Think he's better? Think he's smarter than me? Well, I'll show him! I'll crush him, and crush him, and crush..."

When Yui reached the console to move the room suddenly Gendo went silent.

In a calm tone of voice that was downright eerie, he contrived to sound far more mad than before. "He wants to complain, but he took you from me. He'll never take you from me again, Yui. I'll stop him. I'll do what I never told anyone could be done. I'll do it to stop him, so he'll never come between us, Yui." A giggle escaped the madman. "Because I already knew how I could add the angel to a man. I knew it. I was working on getting you back, and I learned it."

With his eyes rolling now in different directions, totally at odds with the calmness of his face, the madman touched a single button. Reactions started both within the chamber and out with the injured angel.

"I'll have the power to stop him forever now." The TV monitor began showing an ancient cartoon. Gendo began to change while the wounded angel shrank, being absorbed into him. "We'll always be together now."

He sprouted another arm, then something else.

Yui began to scream.

OoOoO

"Here, have a slice. You'll feel much better."

"Roasted dark warrior?" Misato sat in her plugsuit, the LCL swirling around her as she continued to gather herself and counteract the terrible things the interface was trying to do to her.

Thunder Knight dropped a fresh slab across her Eva's knees. "Your Knight needs to absorb the powers of your enemies. Your Earth crystal is still fresh and unstable, you might need a booster shot of their protein to stabilize those, and especially to acquire the force shield powers which caused us so much havoc this time fighting them."

Misato looked at the fork in her left hand that he'd made out of a twisted utility tower. "Uhm..."

"You want to regrow the waist of your Earth Knight, don't you?"

Misato began directing her Eva in eating. Moments later, she exclaimed. "Hey! This is really good! I could get used to a diet of this." She hastily began cramming more meat into her Eva's mouth.

Jared looked over to where several square miles of alien flesh sat. "Well, you might have to. There's an awful lot to eat this time..."

OoOoO

"Status of the Knights?" Mecha-Fuyutsuki asked from where it was enthroned in the command chair of the command station, metal and lights glinting from half his face.

By now the bridge crew were taking this in stride.

They'd had weirder things happen - earlier today, in fact. By now anything so normal as finding a robotic duplicate of a trusted coworker was almost tame.

Rei Ayanami walked into the chamber, looking around, as Aoba muttered. "I'm not getting any readings on Frost Knight's pilot. Misato... err, Cutie Emerald seems to have been saved by her Magic Girl powers. Ritsuko's Knight read her sync ratio jump to 400% just before the last blast from her, cresting the limits of the new soul-filter."

"Did she leave a ribbon for Jared to command her Knight?" Rei asked.

Everybody turned toward her.

"Hi Rei!" Hyuga replied, then shrugged. "No one knows. She left in such a dramatic moment, I wasn't watching. I don't think anyone was. I could check the recording for you."

Rei gave a slight nod. "Please do. It will be vital in knowing if Jared can restore her via the proven methods by which he rescued Yui."

"Right on it!" Hyuga turned back to his boards, feeling cheerful.

"Say, Rei, why'd you leave Frost Knight? We had Eva Rescue on its way, now I'll have to call them off." Aoba leaned back, feeling pre-party rush of post-battle euphoria.

"Please don't."

"Huh?" Aoba clicked a button and the contents of Frost Knight's entry plug were made clear. It was empty. "See, no reason for them to waste their time."

"Do not let them spill the entry plug fluid." Rei informed him.

Aoba was getting confused.

Rei Ayanami walked into the room. "I was unable to locate Dr Akagi."

Rei Ayanami walked into the room, holding a length of yellow ribbon. "I found this lying in Unit Four's cage. I believe it was torn from a party display. I do believe that this serves to indicate that Dr Akagi gave Jared permission to command her Muscle Knight."

Rei Ayanami walked into the room, trailed by Rei Ayanami and two more Rei's Ayanami, holding between them a Rei Ayanami who'd been shot by a severely startled security guard. They reported in chorus. "We will go to the infirmary to await help there."

The other Ayanamis nodded in response.

Every Ayanami began to file out of the room. The last one in line turned to face the bridge crew. "Please do not forget to save Rei Ayanami from the Frost Knight. I note from your boards that her sync ratio crested 400% as the beam claimed her. She will need to be rescued by Jared as well."

Aoba and Maya's eyes had come clear out of their sockets and rolled under the consoles, bumping up against a certain pet carrier. Hyuga waved an arm casually. "Right! I'll let him know."

The other two turned to him, eyeballs retracting on nerves slowly reeling back into place. "How..." they both echoed.

"Could I take this so calmly?" Hyuga asked, completing their question for them. He buffed his fingernails against his shirt, then went back to face his controls, beginning to send orders out to various parties on the battlefield. "I just remembered what Jared said, is all. Remember when he got Rei admitting she was a clone? Well, obviously they made some spare copies."

Maya fell in a dead faint on the floor.

This was too good an opportunity to miss and Aoba fell right across her, also in a dead faint, though with a motive less pure.

"Status of the Eva Rescue teams?" Mecha Fuyutsuki inquired.

A roar came from out of the battlefield monitors. Hyuga covered his ears, rubbing them as the volume had hurt. "We appear to be under attack again." Was all he said.

OoOoO

The fright was bad enough Misato's magical interface failed, and she slumped in a not-too-terribly-well-repaired pile of almost-regenerated Knight.

Jared had left his Thunder Knight to devouring large scraps of dark angel, as the quickest way to recharge internal power (of which he'd used A LOT) was to feed it. Now he raised a muzzle covered in red substance to look to this new source of terror.

When he saw what it was, he set aside the giant ketchup bottle and stood up.

OoOoO

Gendo thought he'd had the perfect plan.

Of course, there were one or two little flaws with it. Trivial, really. Things well worth the cost of the power now flowing within his veins, throbbing in his renewed limbs, and bulging his youthened muscles.

The first was his appearance. The tail kept getting in the way of things.

Second was control. He'd knocked Yui out trying to restrain her hysterics. Now he carried her limp in one arm - her weight was trivial. Third was, though now he was super-powerful, one of the most powerful creatures on Earth, in fact, he could not afford to remain any longer inside the Geofront. It was too close to his opponent's base of power, and with his changes could no longer hide him. The senses of the attacking dark angels would detect him, and he didn't want to be the subject of their attacks.

Simply solved. If he was away from the Geofront he could hide from both Knights and other Aliens and no one would be the wiser. If he hid the tail he could even still pass for human.

But he had not reckoned on the full moon.

OoOoO

The change was FULLY recorded on every monitoring device that Nerv controlled.

It also left Hyuga with his tongue hanging out and his jaw resting in his lap. When he recovered them both, he said. "You know, it's one thing to SAY you believe it. But it's quite another to SEE that Jared was right all along!"

Gendo Ikari, having gone just mad enough to pattern his angel-modified self after an old action cartoon, obviously had forgotten what happens to an alien Dragonball Z character who sees the full moon.

Clutching a slender Yui in one mighty paw, the hundred-foot tall alien Gorilla Gendo gave a massive triumphant roar, and began to amble away through the city, knocking down any inconvenient buildings that got in his way.

Aoba had woken up and was staring with frank disbelief. "I don't BELIEVE it! The moody freak WAS a surgically altered monkey all along!"

Hyuga gestured to the massive screen. "Yah, only now he's got his tail un-snipped somehow."

Aoba climbed back into his chair, saying. "Thunder Knight will get him."

"No takes on THAT bet!" Hyuga grinned.

OoOoO

Automated, rapid-deployment defense drones were actually faster getting to the scene than Jared's Thunder Knight. Tiny robotic tanks were crushed under foot and airplanes swatted away or hit by thrown garbage, buildings, and tanks.

It was a glorious scene of mass destruction, the giant ape leading the way by quite a few points. If it had been a screen shot from an ancient video game called Rampage only a few people would've thought to comment on the unusually high quality of the graphics.

Others viewing it would've thought that Japan was getting back into giant monster movies in *style.* In point of fact, Kensuke would release bootleg copies among his friends and be a media star hounded by studios offering movie contracts almost overnight. The real masters Hyuga would only get to release after trying for months to convince the oversight committee that this wasn't a promotional gimmick.

Gendo had an early start, having chosen one of the access tunnels that gave an exit farthest from the city, and deliberately chosen as opposite where the Knights crouched in their after-battle repairs.

Thunder Knight was also hindered by having placed no small amount of energy into the past fight and now gaining new crystal powers - both exhausting.

There was *also* the comparatively minor fact that Gendo as an ape was FAST! It wasn't until the chase had led all the way to Old Tokyo that Thunder Knight caught up to him, as with Yui still clasped in the beast's furry paw he didn't DARE unleash his greatest range weapons on him.

Thunder Knight created his lightning spear.

Gendo Gorilla looked around, saw that escape by speed was no longer possible, and began to climb up the side of Tokyo Tower, holding Yui in one paw. A new swarm of attack planes and helicopters began to buzz around him, and the giant ape began to swing at them, roaring defiance.

Jared began to consider that just MAYBE he'd let this get away from him. Weird was *his* specialty, since when had all these others started horning in?

The alien gorilla began beating its chest, having put down Yui to swat at planes two-handed while its prehensile feet clung to the building.

~Okay, this was getting just a *little* too weird.~

Next thought.

~So how do you kill a Saiyin all monstered out?~

The tail began wagging before his eyes. One giant, furry, snakelike target. And best of all, cutting it would cause the villain to fall. Except, hmm... knowing this type of alien, he'd survive, and get away, and looking for one humanoid among millions was not any kind of fun. Especially not with one of Gendo's skills doing the hiding.

No. It was time for the bastard to die.

A completely incongruous biplane flew by in a daring raid, with a Knight Saber clung to a ladder hung underneath in her hardsuit while another flew. The team snatched Yui away from the ledge the gorilla had lain her, and Jared took that as his cue.

He adopted the correct pose.

Power began to gather from all his crystals.

"Here I'm standing in the night.  
My crystal powers the only light.

Alone against my darkest fear  
But I sense my friends are near  
I'll draw from each the power I need  
To win this battle and succeed!"

Thunder Knight had begun to power up a blast capable of killing a Saiyin monstered out, and to do so he mentally reached out and tapped into the power of all the remaining Elemental Knights, still lying scattered about Tokyo 3.

Though their pilots were dissolved or incapacitated, their crystals all began to glow.

"Give me the strength to carry on!  
With all our love, we can't go wrong!

Only together we'll face the fight!  
Nothing can stand against our might!"

Ghostly images of other Knights appeared and placed their hands along with Jared's in assisting to form the mighty power ball, counter to the dangerous one being formed by Gendo.

"Frost Power!" Rei's voice cried out over the battlefield.

"Earth Power!" Misato's voice added her agreement.

"...uhm... Power!" Ritsuko's voice added somewhat reluctantly. There came echoes of other calls from a multitude of different sources, ending in a somewhat distant yet distinctly heard...

"Blaze Power!"

Gendo Gorilla was trumpeting his triumph over the airships, as they withdrew from the fire zone. Jared had built up an energy sphere approximately the size of his own chest, a glowing ball of lacy frost crystals, electrical bolts and radiant glow.

The gigantic simian suddenly noticed the loss of Yui, and Jared's Thunder Knight was the largest, most obvious thing in sight. The creature began to glow with a dangerous aura of its own and triples the size of its powerful blast-ball.

"Give me the strength to carry on!  
With all our love, we can't go wrong!

Only together we'll face the fight!  
Nothing can stand against our might!"

Still and all, it was only a dark angel. Jared had the beast lined up, the Tower's height keeping most of the destructive damage confined to the ape and the sky beyond.

He released the massive bolt of power.

Gendo released his at the same time.

"With all our strength the battle's won  
With all our love we can't go wrong."

Jared's massive power bolt carried through, consuming the counter energy bolt and going on to meet the alien. Gendo roared in rage and fear as the bolt annihilated him and half of Tokyo Tower as well.

"We have the strength to carry on!"

Exhausted with the strain, Thunder Knight collapsed into a canal.

OoOoO

The ceiling of the Nerv infirmary was getting fairly familiar by now.

Jared blinked at it.

The door swished open almost in that moment, spilling in family, friends, and loved ones... Oh, and Pen Pen. The little penguin fluttered up to Jared's face, saying. "I'd like to thank you for restoring Misato to her true powers."

The superspy looked in surprise at the former operations director of Nerv, and saw her demonstrate her transformation sequence. That was when he noted something else.

"Uhm, how did everybody... get... who *is* everybody here, anyway?"

One fourteen-year old raised her hand. "I'm Misato." The magical girl laughed.

Another fourteen year old raised her hand. "I'm Misato's Mother."

Yet another fourteen year old girl raised hers. "I'm Ritsuko."

And another cheery girl in her early teens. "And I'm Ritsuko's Mother."

"I'm Yui!" Yui giggled.

"We are Rei Ayanami." Several dozen Rei Ayanamis answered.

"I am Mecha-Fuyutsuki."

"And everybody but the cybernetic dude is fourteen years old." Jared concluded for them, observing what he could himself. Something welled up within him. He sat up straight, giving out a cry that would horrify most men of stout hearts. "ALRIGHT!" The redhead said with every evidence of glee.

And there was much rejoicing.

OoOoO

After the celebrations, later, Mecha Fuyutsuki gave them the current news. Clearing his mechanical throat, he said. "It seems that our new commander will be arriving tomorrow."

Magical Soldier Cutie Emerald pouted, putting down the heavy medical machinery she'd been curling one-handed. "Well, I suppose it had to happen sometime."

"Who is it?" Ritsuko's mom, until recently being out of touch, asked.

Mecha Fuyutsuki addressed them all. "Until recently his name was Ikari, adopted because of his brother Gendo. Since learning of his assignment here, he has reverted to his married name of Saotome."

Jared practically swallowed his throat. "Don't you mean, Genma Saotome?" He said, feeling an excess of terror.

"Yes." Mecha-Fuyutsuki nodded firmly.

The door suddenly burst open and a fat, balding old martial artist shot through to consume Jared in a grease-smelling hug. "Jared! My boy! How PROUD I am! Now the Saotome family legacy is assured."

Jared scowled. At least the old guy could've changed his gi once a year or so. 


	9. Chapter 9

Otaku Reflected  
Episode Three, Eva Revolution

Part Nine  
A Superspy at Work

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

Jared noticed something.

"Say Genma, whatever happened to that kerchief you were always wearing?"

The Saotome patriarch gave a small laugh and let go of the boy to adjust the small cap he was wearing. In fact it looked remarkably like... but *nah!* THAT couldn't possibly be the case!

Genma self consciously adjusted his traditional Jewish tallit (prayer shawl) and put his yarmulke more fully back on his bald head, saying. "Well, you know how it happens. Study the Dead Sea Scrolls for a few decades. Read the Torah a few dozen times, go to a good rabbinical school to get the cultural background you need to understand that mess of insider references the prophets threw in; it all just adds up. Mazel tov! I can hardly believe the God of our fathers was so good to me! Surely, the one who chose Moses to lead our ancestors out of their captivity in Egypt, who led them across the Red Sea on dry ground, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has blessed me almost beyond my capacity to bear! Surely, it is as Baal Shem Tov has said: From every human being there is a light that reaches straight to heaven!"

Jared fainted dead away.

OoOoO

Later, Ritsuko and Misato, still in her Cutie Emerald guise, were both walking home.

"I think Jared is even more scared of Genma than he was of Gendo." Misato said, pondering back to that first day with picking up Jared to find Gendo's name sent him pale with fright.

Ritsuko considered it. "Well, Gendo was pretty standoffish. This Genma character looks like he'll be in Jared's face for the remainder of the boy's life."

"Yeah." Misato sighed, shaking her head. "Poor kid."

Ritsuko's eyes lightened, and she shot a humor-filled glance to her long term friend. "I think he's not the only one. Kid, I mean. You and I have known each other chronologically for longer than either of us have been alive, biologically speaking."

Misato tossed a fun-filled glance to her friend, but whatever it was she was going to say got lost as suddenly the corridor through which they'd been walking filled with men with guns, wearing shades and dark suits, stopping their path in front and behind.

"Okay, nobody move! Keep your hands at your sides, Cutie Emerald, or we'll be forced to shoot your friend."

"What's going on here!" Cutie Emerald shouted, obeying instructions in spite of how much it rankled her, or until she could think of something better.

The head man among the kidnappers smiled grimly, motioning forward teams of subordinates who began taking out knockout drugs in various applicators and forms. "We're just giving you a little trip, girlie. There's some folks who're mighty curious about you and all that stuff you *might* do if you really turn out like they think. I'd be mighty curious myself if you ARE a magical girl."

One of the villainous henchmen made a comment about what happens to the magic part if they stopped being girls. Their loss of innocence was clearly on his mind as the test.

Misato took a step back, while Ritsuko was paralyzed with fright. Misato accused the men. "You work for Cyber Jew, don't you?" The magic girl asked, trying to figure out how to escape from this.

The man just smiled grimly.

From out of nowhere Pen Pen appeared to do his magical mascot twirl and flip, causing a necklace with a yellow stone to appear and fall into Ritsuko's hands. "Ritsuko! Turn back into Pretty Akagi and help Cutie Emerald! The time has come for you to resume your fight against darkness and evil alongside your beloved team leader!"

Ritsuko's fist was thrust in the air faster than thought. While her foes were still gaping, she shoved any lingering doubts far down inside and flung the necklace in place around her white throat simultaneous as she shouted.

"By the Power of Love!"

The startled men started firing, their bullets bounced off the force field arrangement that Washu made up to create their 'magic' outfits, based off her daughter's fighting attire and the Jurai battlesuits.

When the amber light had finished, leaving Ritsuko in a yellow costume just as frilly and ruffled as Misato's, Pen Pen fluttered up, lucky that no one was firing on him as he said. "Magical Soldiers! Use your Gemstone Beams! Cutie Topaz, take the front! While you, Cutie Emerald, take out the bad guys behind you!"

Without even knowing how it was they were doing it, both girls responded to the call by assuming sentai positions they NEVER would've considered before meeting Jared. A hasty pirouette and spin each and they spread their arms like they were spreading double handfuls of glitter in clouds in front of them, which it was what it looked like they'd done.

"In the name of Friendship..." Ritsuko began as she spun.

"In the name of Beauty..." Misato responded, still spinning herself.

"Under the Banner of Love!" They both cried out together, coming down to assault poses, arms cocked and crossed to begin the glitter throw.

"Magical Topaz..." Ritsuko made the throw with empty hands and clouds of glittery yellow particles filled the air in front of her anyway.

"Magical Emerald..." Misato did the same, having turned to fill the corridor behind with her clouds of green sparkles. The men they'd been facing were stunned into immobility by a handy trick of Washu's. It wouldn't do to have the bad guys get away while a magical girl worked up to do her attacks, after all.

"Gemstone BEAMS!" Two rays of brightly colored energy filled the hallway in front and behind the Magical Soldiers, eliminating all life down to the microbe level and scarring a deep hole at either end of the corridor.

"YATTA!" Both magical girls bounced prettily into victory poses.

OoOoO

A plane set down on the tarmac of the Tokyo Three International Airport. Among the passengers to disembark were five cute girls, who quickly gathered their luggage and made their way to the exit gates. Another woman disembarked the same plane, carrying a long bundle that security guards had somehow missed.

By coincidence it seemed, they got on transports headed the same way.

OoOoO

"It was horrible!" Jared moaned, shivering in Sylia's protective arms.

"Shhh. It'll be alright, I promise you." The head Knight Saber cooed.

He shivered a few minutes longer, until finally he noticed something. "Say, when did *you* turn fourteen years old?"

"Ten years ago, silly." She ruffled his hair playfully, then turned to admire herself in a mirror. "But if you're asking when did I get a youthening effect, it was when you got in battle with Gendo and tapped all your friends for power. Apparently you went beyond the Eva pilots and grabbed *all* of your friends and fighting teammates. Then when the backlash of the interface rewrote everyone to an appropriate age to pilot the Knights it got us too. I just got word from the Laser Angels that they're returning here. Apparently being in their early teens hampers their efficacy as assassins somewhat."

"Oh." He resumed shivering.

Sylia once again enfolded him in a kindly hug. "Hush, it'll be fine. We don't mind. You have a remarkable subconscious, you know, able to do all sorts of things when you aren't normally up to them. All of the ladies dissolved in the interfaces got freed the moment you woke them up to use their powers. A minor thing like giving us an extra childhood isn't going to upset us."

With a sigh, he finally relaxed in her arms.

She leaned into him, giving extra care and affection into the hug. "Oh, by the way. I had Vision steal Knight Unit Six. She's its lady now. We're hiding it in a warehouse I own while we repair and fix it. Washu has offered to do free upgrades for us if we steal a whole set."

He leaned into the hug, relaxing. "That's nice." He murmured, softly satisfied.

OoOoO

In the morning.

"So where was this new pilot we're supposed to get?"

"Oh, her. She got delayed. The UN fleet that was going to escort her and the Knight has suffered delays getting assembled. They're actually further from getting here now than they were ten days ago." Ritsuko set out the bowls and the cereal, then went back for the milk.

"That's no surprise." Misato entered, scratched around one foot, and then went to add orange juice and a plate of waffles to the table. It was a low stress breakfast. Anyway, she went on to say. "That organization's got so many flaws you set them toward *any* goal and they'd walk backward away from it. I wouldn't be surprised if they brought on the end of the human race just trying to preserve it."

"That may be true." Agreed Rei, removing the apron she'd had on and hanging it from a hook in the kitchen.

"Say, Rei." Jared asked, finishing putting out the tableware. "Where are all the other Reis?"

"There were accommodations here only for one." She answered enigmatically, then killed the mystery with her next spoken thought. "So they have taken arrangements near to the command center, to be ready for emergencies. It hardly matters in any case, we are due to move to Germany when the new pilot arrives."

"You could send only one of you." Jared offered.

"No." Rei shook her head. "I like to stay in touch with myself. I will be going with the others when they leave."

"Well it's hardly a fair trade." Misato groused, laying out a dish of fish for Pen Pen. "I mean, you're Lady to the second most powerful Knight in the world! We're hardly getting a full value replacement. Although..." She sat down and rested her chin in her hands. "I know Asuka from when she was a kid. It'll be nice to see her again."

"So what magical soldier is she?"

"Sapphire... SAY! How am *I* supposed to know?" Misato snapped at the neo penguin that had just joined the conversation.

Pen Pen gave her the stare, the one that said 'how do you think?' He then fluttered up to speak to her face. "But you just answered. How *else* do you explain it but that the memories denied you by Cyber Jew are coming back? I'm just prompting them, Misato."

The off-duty magical girl blushed furiously, unable to deal with this right now.

Jared just grinned into his spoon, having already said a quick blessing on the food. He chose to wonder what the prima donna of mecha jockies would do when confronted with the fact that she had to fight evil wearing a frilly dress and short skirt.

Well, okay, she'd done the tests naked when required to. Outfits she could probably deal with. The sentai phrases were SURE to get her though, if a talking neo-penguin didn't first. He was rather looking forward to seeing Asuka's reaction to all this. He'd get out of marrying her for sure.

The door track slid open, revealing the happy horde of teenage parents had awoken and were now rising from their makeshift quarters in the basement.

"Hi There!" Yui caroled, coming over to give Jared a hug, then rumple Rei's hair.

*GLOMP!*

"Missie Darling! gOOd mORnINg! Did you have sweet dreams? Did you sleep well last night?" Misato's mother consumed her *terribly* embarrassed daughter in a hug wide enough to sweep all Tokyo into the sea and then proceeded to rub their faces to each other's, cheek by cheek. "I know, you were lonely for your lovie, dovie boyfriend all night, weren't you? Well, don't you worry, precious chub-chub. We'll get you married right away. You'll be glad that you wAITed, darling, precious dearie."

Watching Misato's mom go into singsong tones to cuddle a daughter no younger physically than the mother, Ritsuko broke up into giggles.

"But I thought, I mean that she..." Yui halted, flopping into a chair by the breakfast table. She'd been around long enough by now to have been plugged into the gossip chain among the staff somewhat, and had heard a few things.

Jared lifted a waffle off the common plate by a serving fork, which he returned. "You all seem to have had the wrong choices and resultant experiences burned out through the absorption process. Major sins were eliminated. You might say that you've all been reborn. From all that I've gathered so far none of you can even recall certain things about your lives, things that were associated with wickedness. It's as if they'd never happened to you."

The associated adults and... all the other kids, looked around the table at each other.

Jared poured a generous serving of honey, then dabbed at a spill with a napkin. "I talked with Maya after the physicals you all went through. You've all been reset to what you really were at this age, with some stray memories about good stuff clinging on. Misato had a scar that Maya said she doesn't have anymore. Even though some of you are the moms of the rest of us, you all still have the..." He blushed pink to his ears. "...physical evidence of virginity."

He closed his eyes, then opened to direct them in a kind gaze toward Yui. "None of you have any recollection of the major bad events that once filled your lives. Yui didn't even *recognize* the man who'd once been her husband... it's like all your mistakes in life back to this point have been erased."

"So Misato can't even remember..." Yui puzzled aloud.

"Neither can you." Jared poured more syrup. "Everyone at this table had things they're better off forgetting. You should've SEEN Ritsuko! Last night she came across the swimsuit calender and tore it to ribbons. It was worse than the first time she'd ever seen it."

Ritsuko was blushing now, looking demurely down to the table. "It's just that, those things they showed me wearing. It was so *embarrassing!*" Her glance went down to her breasts, which were definitely not nearly so full anymore, and frowned.

Jared gave the table a shrug. "So don't worry about it. Second chance at life and all that. Give yourselves a chance to enjoy it."

Misato's mother was back to horribly embarrassing her daughter in an all-consuming hug talking about her upcoming marriage.

Naoko Akagi, Ritsuko's mother, gave her daughter a friendly pat on the arm and sat down next to the other fourteen year old. As Naoko took a spoonful of miso soup, Ritsuko asked for her. "So how about you? Did you lose anything, Sky Lord?"

Jared shrugged. "Nothing much I could tell, but then I wouldn't be able to anyway. I would be willing to guess, though, that since I was losing no age in the change, I might've kept other things as well."

Having thought about it, the crowd turned to their breakfast.

Rei spoke up. "Today is parent-teacher conference at the school. Who will attend, in what capacity?"

There was a stunned, short silence.

"Well... I *am* officially Jay-chan's guardian..." Misato speculated.

"I should still be yours, dearest, precious Mi-chan!"

"But I am his legal mother..."

"Yeah, but you show up at school and they'll enroll you. They don't care about my doctorates any more than they will yours." Jared answered.

The entire flock of teenagers looked at each other, speechless.

"Back to school?"

"Ewwww!"

OoOoO

Washu's hoots of helpless laughter finally brought more attention from the Tenchi household in to see what was so funny.

OoOoO

The room was filled with monoliths, only this time only four of them were faceless. Over the entire room were brightly lit panels shaped as the backs of playing cards. The floor was one, their table was another, the ceiling a third, and the walls were paneled with them. In addition to that fact, three quarters of the silent, floating monoliths that had represented the most powerful men on the planet were in the shape of playing cards.

The back of every card read, in Hebrew, "CLUB your SEELE."

"Our plans to capture this magical girl for examination seem to have failed." 01 said.

"Purely predictable, given that her powers seem to be real." 05 answered, looking across to where 03 had once been. The man had at least lived long enough to pay up on their bet. But now instead of a monolith marking the presence of a man, there was only a huge playing card that read the Three of Traitors.

Monolith 01 morphed into Keele Lorenz in his usual garb, and the cybernetic vision device - or what they now assumed was one after Pen Pen revealed they fought some character called Cyber Jew. Keele touched a control and glanced between twin holograms showing Misato Katsuragi and Magical Soldier Cutie Emerald.

Other than hair color and costume, they were identical.

"I cannot see how these are supposed to represent the same person. They are too different for any reasonable person to assume a connection. We will have to research how it is they switch to make the replacement, and where Major Katsuragi goes when this other person slips in to take her place."

The strange thing was, he really MEANT it. In spite of how lame the disguise was to those who could see through it, it worked against those who hadn't seen the soldier change in person. Washu was rather proud of that device.

"So, Cyber Jew..." Began the sycophantish murmur or number 08, in between two cards that read the Nine of Sickoes, and the Seven of Farts.

"Do NOT call me by that name." Came Keele's answering snarl from where he was presently located in between the Deuce of Dunces and the King of Queers.

"So you are telling us that you are *not* responsible for the curse turning Magical Soldier Cutie Emerald into an alcoholic?" Returned 05's voice, displaying a certain amount of disbelief. That monolith hovered in between the Six of Slimes and the Four of Disgusting Criminal Foulness That Deserves To Be Burned.

Keele Lorenz scowled deeper than usual. "That you need to ask the question itself I find ridiculous. If there is indeed any connection between her and Major Katsuragi, of course I was responsible for events leading up to her addiction. It served my purposes. But I am not some twisted cartoon villain hatching ridiculous plots for world domination."

Crickets played in the sudden silence.

There came some stressed out sniggering from the monolith occupying the space of 11, the last of them to be still featureless. The playing cards all occupying space at the table were quiet in the grim silence of still death. 11, sitting back behind the remote station whose hardware brought him to this conference, looked between the Queen of Harlots and the Ten of Dweebs, wondering how he would look as the Jack.

"Something is killing us." 08 repeated the obvious. "Who better than you?"

"Our secure communications have been tapped." Keele retorted. "That should be obvious to any of you. We should no longer be discussing such subjects."

"Possibly that would have something to do with you publishing the design circuits' specifics and the frequency code. Not that posting the times of our usual meetings did any harm." 05 transformed into a hard man in a business suit, laying a copy of How To Destroy All Life In Three Easy Impacts on the table.

"That is not my doing." Came Keele's response.

"Then who else? There are facts in this book that I was not aware of, but on a search turned out to have been correct. I doubt there was anyone at this table able to lay our plots out in detail as firm as this... except you."

"We should instead be concerned with is containing the damage." Keele retorted.

"Perhaps we should." 08 replied. "By first plugging leaks."

"Wouldn't you agree... Cyber Jew?" 05 asked with malice filling his voice.

Keele Lorenz' face vanished, and his monolith winked out. The man who'd delivered so many death sentences would now be on a run for his life, if indeed he could die. If not he would still be scrambling to preserve his power by opposing the secret group he himself had worked to create.

Keele himself had retained tremendous power. It would be a battle royal.

The secret master of the Vatican turned to his business associate and long term friend, the man who covertly ruled the entire communist block. "The UN is the greatest tool under his direct command. We should move immediately to destroy it."

"Agreed."

08 rubbed his chin, thinking of which persons in which positions would be given their commands through what priests or confessors. "And I believe it is time for another holy war in the middle east. The Arabs may not be able to deny him access to the Jewish holy sites, but they can complicate his approach and restrict that resource nicely."

05 agreed. "I feel it is also time to start activating some of our remote groups. Nazis have been regrowing nicely from the seeds we planted. I can divert sufficient funds to their South American bases to make them a world power in under a year."

11 intruded now, speculating. "I believe we should also start to recruit new members to our society, replacing our losses with figures Keele will be less familiar with."

"Whom did you have in mind?" 05 asked over folded hands.

Monolith 11 resolved into the man who held in his gnarled hand the viability of every currency on the Earth, though all of the men there had branches outside their specialties as well, there were too many things to control not to. He touched a control and a new hologram appeared.

05 steepled his hands. "Interesting choice."

08 nodded. "I agree. What method shall be used to approach?"

11 rubbed his wrinkled hands. "I believe we have something already in mind."

"True, and the act of sacrificing her three closest vice presidents to our aims certainly proves both her ruthlessness and loyalty." 05 agreed. "By all means, recruit her."

08 nodded. "Yes, Doctor Sylia Stingray. Possibly the greatest robotics expert on Earth if those unmanned war machines are any indication. Her loyalty to us was *obviously* proven when she was willing to transform her three closest friends into androids according to our wishes. She could be of great use to us in neutralizing some of Keele's precious projects. By all means, recruit her."

11 made the notation. "I shall. Since her rather brutal takeover the Marduke has been a growing force in world affairs."

"Brutal?" 05 asked, curious.

"My agents cannot find a single person from the staff of those corporations, previous to her assuming command of them, that remains alive today." 11 smirked.

"I see. Yes, that certainly seems to qualify her. An excellent choice. I note in her file that she has many ties to world agencies under Keele's direct control. Shall we task her with infiltrating and perhaps destroying them?"

"Why not? If she survives, we benefit. If she fails, we benefit." 08 smirked.

05 waved a hand to indicate their room. "On another topic. I want to know who is the joker responsible for this."

The backs of playing cards representing the room and all their furniture suddenly flipped around to reveal joker faces, all of which began laughing.

OoOoO

11 lived long enough to send the right commands to his subordinates before troops bearing the UN logo broke into his private sanctuary and gunned him down. Later that same day Soviet stealth bombers dropped N2 bombs on both the New York and Switzerland UN Headquarters while the members met together in full session.

War was declared in the middle east by dropping chemical bombs on Jerusalem.

The drug lords in South America received instructions from their hidden masters and began to make shipments of hundreds of tons of hard cash into secret jungle bases where certain grizzled and hardened old men began to enact plans that had been in the making for years. The armies of Brazil and Argentina as well as neighbor countries were assimilated at once, and began to make their own changes in accordance with those plans while leaders were flown in from locations all around the world where they'd lain quietly waiting for this all of their lives.

The American Moon landing was officially debunked on global news broadcasts.

The US President was assassinated by a thermonuclear device backpacked in by a terrorist that eliminated half of that nation's capitol and almost all of its leaders.

A new revolt began in the soviet countries, starting in Russia, transforming them from their deceptive peaceful frame once again into the bloody killers they'd always been, under all their clever lies.

Bombings in northern Africa began to eliminate known terrorist hideouts.

The British Monarchy died from a rather sudden blast by satellite beam weaponry.

Global economic currency collapse began almost at once, as Keele couldn't get the agents he'd chosen to take that over seeing as how they'd all died, and central banking was something that demanded constant, intricate control, especially in times of crisis.

The secret recipe for Coca Cola was revealed and turned out to still have cocaine in it, dating back to its origins as cocaine cola (thus its name).

China declared war on the US, diverting its transports around Taiwan and sending them on to shore bombardments and assault landings in Washington and California, with support from troops sent up from the south by the bought-off Mexican government.

Japan retaliated by dropping its biological warfare agents in main Chinese cities. A sweep of Black Death, Anthrax, Killer Flu and Mad Cow disease all began to lay waste to those population centers, spreading quickly into India and Siberia.

Korea responded in kind against Japan. The Vietnamese began to load themselves into ready transports, starting an invasion against Japan in payback for WWII, while China got in the act with nukes.

Race wars began in Africa, black against white and tribe against tribe, using every weapon from the most modern to the ancient in their fervent desire to slaughter each other. The hatred and malaise spreading across the world in short order.

Cuba became the launch point of an invasion army reaching the US southern states. Canadian units began to shoot refugee Unites States citizens that began to flee across the border while the Canadian government denied there was any emergency.

Scientists announced that Evolution was so much hogwash and Darwin hadn't really understood anything about genetics anyway.

The pope called for an armed crusade against evil.

With the loss of the New York stock exchange (along with the UN Headquarters and most of the city), the other stock exchanges began to go wild, fueled by the crazy currency fluctuations just begun and that finally led to the greatest stock crash of all time.

Then the secret war got nasty.

OoOoO

"Will you look at this? It seems that the CIA just came out and admitted they're the ones behind all those UFO sightings in the States. They revealed the equipment and fully functional flying saucers to help fight off the invasion armies closing in on them."

"This is all happening so fast." Misato answered her friend, as Ritsuko read a paper in the helicopter gunship that took them near to Old Tokyo for the demonstration that was to take place. Jared was with them, having been excused from school because of Japan's present emergency crisis.

No one had been brave enough to do the role of Parent the other day, so they had ended up calling in Mecha-Fuyutsuki to the job.

He'd done it surprisingly well.

Ritsuko shrugged, putting the paper down. "It had to happen when we were in the midst of fighting for our lives against aliens, didn't it? I mean, I know all these pressures had been building for some time. I'd just hoped we could put a lid on it until after the threat of racial annihilation was past."

"People who hate don't think clearly, they just hate." Jared idly opened his mouth to respond. Rei had to stay with the Knights, but as they didn't have any functional (supreme exhaustion was worse than battle damage, in its way. Thunder Knight would be longer in making its recovery than some of the others), it was kind of pointless.

He looked across to where the others were both wearing plugsuits, third generation. Misato's was black and Ritsuko's was yellow. They all had sidearms strapped on their hips now, too. Japan was a nation at war. All sorts of no-weapon restrictions had gotten lifted.

Ritsuko and Misato both nodded, taking the information seriously. Jared was a little surprised how both ladies now took anything he might say as gospel. But then he stretched a bit, turning to look out toward their airship's destination: A big dome building larger than any stadium he'd ever seen.

They were there momentarily, at the vast conference center inside the headquarters to the rival of their own defense project, at a table reserved for Nerv personnel. Their hosts gave the standard speech about how this new project of theirs was going to replace the best the Earth had and outpace their competition, etc. For Jared it was so boring it was hard to stay awake.

They finally came to the question and answer period. Ritsuko had changed in body yet not so far in outlooks. Her hand shot up as the first one there. Jared was expecting the usual exchange of insults between her and the chairman of this conference, but he was surprised right from the start.

"Ah, one of our honored representatives from Nerv. Tell me, who are you and what possessed that rather tarnished organization to send a flock of children to represent them?"

Ritsuko was taken aback, forgetting her question.

Jared had already had enough of this guy and stood up, gesturing to the girl in her yellow plugsuit. "This is Star Queen, pilot of the fantastic Solar Knight, a veteran of the fights that have kept you and your precious organization alive long enough to be standing here to boast at our expense today."

Everyone seemed a little taken aback, but the man at the pulpit rallied quickly. "And that would make you Sky Lord, wouldn't it? We've all heard about you. Tell me, what came over Nerv to start naming things like they were a children's show?"

Jared had studied extensively those things that it was possible to do with a Knight, through his resources and superspy tools. He now tapped into its power remotely to glow and rise up from off the floor, forming a lightning spear with a peal of thunder in his hands, to the startled amazement of all those present.

"I won't let you mock us until after you *beat* us, mister! Care to try?"

The man had hidden behind the stand and was shaking nervously. He quickly said, several times, that was unnecessary, and Jared relaxed, allowing the spear to disperse and himself to float to the floor. Misato and Ritsuko were looking absurdly proud and defiant as they flanked him on either side, facing off against the roomful of people.

The audience burst into simultaneous applause, many of them with Sky Lord comics tucked under their arms or in briefcases. Hyuga and Aoba would get word of this event and acquire tapes so they could incorporate it in the next issue.

The man resumed his stand, looking much more humbled.

"Back to the subject at hand, did you have a question, Star Queen?"

Ritsuko glanced at Jared, not having had a pilot or a Knight's name until this moment, but not about to question him on it. Fortunately, she remembered her question. "Yes, the unit you are about to showcase, it contains its own integral nuclear reactor, doesn't it?"

The man up at the podium nodded, able to return to a great deal of his former pride to be finding himself back on a familiar topic. "Yes, this is our product's most distinguished feature, offering over 150 days of continuous operating power."

"Does it have a maximal overdrive?" Jared broke in.

"Excuse me, what?" The man at the podium asked.

Ritsuko had deferred to Jared the minute he'd started speaking once again. With a sigh, he repeated himself. "An overdrive? As I'm sure that you're aware, looking over our documents obtained through the freedom of information act, the longest actual battle with a dark warrior lasted just under five minutes. Even our Muscle Knights have ample power for that. LENGTH of operating time has been of trivial battlefield importance next to the power that can be focused into a few choice moments. Do your machines have any ability to reach greater output for shorter periods?"

The man blinked several times. "Uh, I'm not aware of any..."

Before he could say the end to that sentence, Jared was moving on. "Because so far the Archer class of giant android isn't what it could be."

"What?" The man was confused. "Excuse me, what did you call these? The project is..."

Jared waved him off. "Yeah, so you had your people think up a stupid name too. It won't stick with you forever, don't worry. Jet Alone makes me think of a solitary hot tub, not a combat machine, especially not one that doesn't have jets and can't even fly. No, what I'm worried about is that your project's most distinguishing features are its slow speed, lack of durability, and an utter void of useful weapon systems."

"Weapon systems are customizable suited to the need." The man retorted. "And as for durability..."

"I have been shot, stabbed, beheaded, strangled, frozen, dismembered and often many of those combined." Jared replied, overriding him. "All at power levels able to break through the rather thin shell over your android's chassis and breach its core. A Muscle or an Elemental Knight has the demonstrated capacity to restore itself from near total destruction in order to overcome a foe. That capacity to regenerate even on a battlefield also makes them cheap to operate, as repair or replacement costs are a fraction of what they could be if they were pure machines. A Knight can take punishment that would leave a score of this android style so much rubble. Compared to that, your project has no durability."

"But it's more humane than a system that induces tremendous mental stress and causes mental instability in the pilots." The man retorted, acquiring a nasty smirk. Several of the project's closer backers snickered aloud at this comeback.

"Is it more humane that one pilot should suffer or an entire city be boiled alive in the fireball resulting from one of your androids suffering a breach to its reactor core?"

"I would think it was more safe than an extremely *dangerous* weapon system in the hands of mere children." He flashed a page that had Thunder Knight's image on it.

~Aha! An Opening!~

"As far as *I'm* concerned _your_ weapon system isn't dangerous ENOUGH!" Jared shouted, really getting into this, and grateful that his plans were now proceeding. He took out a remote control device and hit a button, causing all the lights in the conference chamber to go black, except the exit lamps and a display screen suddenly lighted on the wall behind the officiator.

The display consisted of large-scale schematics of the Jet Alone.

Somehow the guy at the podium got his mike back functioning. He shouted into it. "How did you get ahold of these diagrams? They're private property top secret at the highest levels!"

Jared shrugged. "Thank you for confirming their accuracy. I only took a look at reports of their operating abilities and outward appearance and reverse engineered the rest from there. Actually, I think that my design might be better than yours, as I only needed a third of the internal space for the same capabilities. The rest I have divided into other functions."

"But..." The man at the podium sputtered, seeing his backers give their interest to the boy. "How could you? We only published that report four days ago."

Jared posed triumphantly, with a V for victory over his eyes. "Yes! But I am the Second Greatest Scientific Genius In The Universe!" He spun about, emphasizing the final two words. "In Training."

Ritsuko and Misato, along with the comic-holding crowd, burst into applause.

Actually, he *had* stolen the design specs, but he'd also made a call to the Agency and made a request that his scientific skills be brought back online for this mission, and it had been granted. He'd spent the intervening time modifying the Jet Alone plans.

"One minor feature," he shifted the displayed view to show the internal reactor space as now decentralized. "Was that I modified the former internal power from one fission plant taking up all that room unnecessarily, into a dozen decentralized micro fusion power reactors that individually have the same output, and collectively have a whole lot more. They're also safe from a combat perspective as I used a military auto-scram design on a cold core plant, meaning they wink out and stop operating instead of having a danger they'll explode if their integrity is ever breached."

The view shifted to a compare-contrast mode between the former back design of the present unit, and one of a new style. "Of course, coincidentally, this means that we have a mounting space along the back, now that we don't need those rods anymore. I've added shoulder rails along the Muscle Knight design so the new Archer class could take advantage of Geofront launch ports as well as the Knight series of transport/bombers." Jared touched a tab and the display shifted to a back view of the giant robot, with a boomer-style set of giant thrusters deployed. "Speed is a real issue, but with a combination of the Knight Wing transports and integral jump thrusters in the android we can set up a deployment system that can get them roughly to the area of a battle. That outta do them to start. We'll be losing enough of them in combat that we really don't want to be putting *expensive* options on."

A new view showed their armor panels.

"I increased the adsorbability of damage by 30%, but it really won't mean anything if they come under fire. So the only sensible option for deploying them is to go for range and distance attacks, rather than hand to hand." The view shifted yet again, to the Archer robot holding an energy rifle. "But with twelve internal fusion reactors they'll have the power to use a mobile positron rifle at full efficacy, getting a shot off almost every twenty seconds. That's why I'd assumed you'd be willing to deploy these as ranged combat support units. Thus the name Archers."

He gave a short nod. "Just like their namesake, weak and unarmored, foolhardy to risk in close combat, but nevertheless very valuable distance weapon troops."

Jared clicked off the display, posing proudly as the lights came back on. "Without an AT field they'll never have the ability to absorb crystals or take real damage. Not to mention they'll never regenerate and so you'll want to keep them out of the way of real danger, on the outskirts of the battlefield, really. But then we've already *got* close combat covered as well as any reasonable commander could like. No reason to reinforce our strong suit when there are still so many weak points that could be addressed." He tucked his arms up behind his head and posed casually. "The Archers' piloting issues raise real worries, but for a mass producible combat robot with the hitting power of a positron rifle I think we'd be willing to live with those. The fact that they're *inferior* to Knights doesn't mean they're unusable."

The chamber was deathly silent.

"Mass producible?" The man currently cowering behind the podium asked.

"Yah!" Jared produced rolls of plans, which spilled over his hands and onto the table. "I have here a little plan I whipped up in an odd afternoon to make a manufacturing plant for the mass production of the Archer style giant androids, self-sufficient from raw materials, that outta be able to crank out a dozen of them on a sustained basis each month. I was gunna take a lunch hour sometime and make a repair facility to go with it. But so far my homeroom athletics homework has been taking all my free time. You know how it is. We have to prepare for a paintball test coming up next week."

The sound of jaws dropping could be heard from as far away as Mexico.

After a long silence, one of the other guests asked. "What will the armaments of the Jet Alone be?"

The officiator cleared his throat nervously, fully aware that his entire lecture had just been trumped by a little boy - if even *half* the things he'd said turned out to be true. "Uh, well, we are well stocked with a variety of conventional armaments..."

Jared made a very rude noise.

"Conventional." The redhead fourteen year old made the word an insult. "There's nothing conventional that stands a chance against these bad guys."

By now the person behind the podium was getting sick of these interruptions. He slapped both hands down on the stand and shouted. "Well, perhaps the boy scientist would like to explain the nature of weapons that *do* work! It might save us millions on the design cycle."

"Very well." Sky Lord said graciously, aware of victory. "A short synopsis of the available unconventional weaponry seems in order."

Again the lights went out. The screen showed only the first English letter. "A, atomic energy; namely, nuclear weapons. These have showed some results against our enemies, but the devastation to our own landscape has been out of proportion to the good results. A fool's weapon and one of desperation as they would be prohibitively self destructive to destroy even a single Dark Angel this way. Even injuring one with these to gain time costs us dearly."

The screen shifted to show the second letter of the English alphabet. "B, biological energy; namely, bacteriological and germ warfare. Anyone who thinks they can brew a viral or bacteriological weapon against an alien biology in a few minutes has my hat off to them for trying, but I don't think they'll succeed. And so far each invader has had a unique biology even compared to the others who came before. Worse, attempts to make a wide enough ranging killer microbe to get more than one type of foe would wipe us off the planet before it did our enemies significant harm."

Again the screen changed, showing a single letter.

"C, chemical energy; namely poison gas and toxic compounds. Again, we've got the problem that whatever would kill the last one wouldn't kill the next, and anything toxic enough to get them both would wipe us from off the planet. Assuming the thing didn't warp to acquire immunity, and we could even come up with such a compound, the next one to arrive could use it against us deliberately, grateful for having been given such a great idea in the first place. A critter able to change its biology on the fly isn't going to be upset by a pile of rat poison. We should be grateful they haven't thought of this on their own yet, because this is *far* more dangerous to us than it ever will be to them."

Most of the crowd expected him to stop here.

But he didn't.

"D, dimensional energy; namely the super dimensional space-time oscillation bomb, code-named the Chocolate Parfait Monster. It's like taking an eraser to reality. Only, the only times it has ever been detonated that eraser has turned out to be a magnet scrambling an old computer disk. If you ever want to experience the birds shining and the sun chirping as you breathe the fire, walk the air, drink the earth, and warm yourself at the water, then this is your cup of tea. But I don't recommend it otherwise. If I were to measure it accurately, each time this bomb has been set off it has left only a sole survivor to the entire human race. But being a *time* bomb, in a literal sense, it has something of a habit of scrambling history back only to a certain point. Fortunately, there is a tendency of reality to reform itself, like water flowing back in to fill a lake that has been emptied by a big, volcanic eruption. But there's no telling what the lake will look like each time it reforms, or any guarantee that it will."

In the dead silent chamber, Jared said as an aside. "Would you believe the first time this thing was used it was by a nation trying to settle a *land dispute* with a neighbor? We didn't have aliens invading back then. But it appears each time this thing gets set off when we get reality back it is just ever so slightly weirder."

He laughed good-heartedly. "Not," he said calmly. "That any of you would notice."

"Are you trying to claim...?" Accused an old gentleman from across the room.

"Oh, pish-tosh." Jared pish-toshed. "By the very nature of the thing, there can be no proof. We're not carrying souvenirs about afterward. I'm not trying to make any claims, you'll never believe them anyway. We're just listing alternative weapons here."

"Uh, not to interrupt, but how many times has this thing been set off? And why?" Misato asked. "I mean, if anyone knew how dangerous it was."

Jared shrugged. He'd been inventing this stuff on the fly, borrowing from the various anime series he'd seen, just to fill in before he could get to E, but she had asked a decent question. "First off, there's no guarantee the person who knows about it has any effect on the decision to set it off. The knowledge just doesn't seem to translate for most people. Secondly, there are times when it *has* been set off in full knowledge of what was going to happen when it went. It makes a superb suicide device for those times when Third Impact has already happened, getting a chance to do over again the last critical fights leading up to where it occurred. Anyone I know would take a roll of the dice over an already accomplished extinction, so automates have often been put in place."

He sighed, wishing to terminate this and go on. "So far it has been used nine times."

"I see." Misato sighed, thinking that for once she'd be grateful for a chance to look at one of those previous lives, where she was beginning to strongly suspect that she'd been a magical girl in a fight verses evil. If this was weirder than THAT, what *was* going on around here anyway?

Misato glanced around suspiciously, trying to find if there was any way she could tell. Strangely, Ritsuko was doing the same thing, for exactly the same reasons.

"There was also in D, the Mole unit." Jared decided he may as well be thorough on this. "A small device of theoretically unlimited potential. Space is wrapped in a dimensional shield that becomes its own cocoon, completely insulating its wearer from the outside world. The pseudo-molecule that forms the outer shell can control the effects of radiation, heat, light, gravity... all forms of energy. The impact not only of bullets, but also of nuclear blasts will be negated. And through the control of inertial mass and surface friction it becomes possible to move at any sub-light speed. Furthermore, by control of the interface with normal reality, the strength of a user becomes nearly infinite, transcending completely all of the rules of modern physics. For all intents and purposes, a Moldiver can rewrite the laws of his personal reality on the fly to suit his purposes, limited only by his intellect and imagination."

If people thought they were stunned before, that was *nothing* now.

Jared straightened his glasses. "But it was learned dearly, and to our cost, how easy it was for the dark angels to overcome a Mole unit, and their users, Moldivers. Dimensional energy flux can be vicious, and many things can happen to those who take liberties with it - few of them pleasant. We had thought we were able to handle it, relying exhaustively on the principles of the Mole unit for our defense against the invaders. But the first of them to appear spread a harmonic field that interfaced with the Moldivers." He sighed. "They were sent crackling into acoherency, spread over a multitude of dimensions and forever unable to reconstitute themselves."

He directed a calm gaze over the assemblage. "The risks of Dimensional Energy are enough to break a cold sweat out on the face of any thinking person." He snorted. "As well as most madmen."

A final letter appeared on the board.

"E, elemental energy; namely the Elemental Knight and Dark Angel crystals. These are focused, non-terminal weapons that have the twin advantages none of the others share: We can control them, and they hurt the enemy. By virtue of their limits none of these poses risks to the survival of our race nor any of the physical laws we depend on. They are safe for the user and limited in their effect, with sufficient output and force to rely on in combat against the Hellspawn."

Jared gave a bow to the assemblage.

"Thank you for your attention." The lights came back on and he left with Ritsuko and Misato flanking him on either side.

OoOoO

The Jet Alone demonstration went off without a hitch, but it was rather anticlimactic. Jared hadn't been trying to steal their funding, but he succeeded anyway. The first mass production plant for Archer unmanned artillery robots began that same week. 


End file.
